


A Twist in the Myth

by Dunkelgelb



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Angst, Blood and Gore, Crossover, Double Penetration, Drama, Drowning, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fivesome - F/M/M/M/M, Future Major Character Death, Hentai, M/F, M/M, Metal soundtrack!, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Moresomes, Multi, Murder, Oral Sex, Other, Pregnancy, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Tentacles, Threesome - F/F/M, Threesome - F/M/M, Violence, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:35:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 157,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunkelgelb/pseuds/Dunkelgelb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years of exposure to the radioactive energies of the Shikon no Tama have made Naraku deathly ill. To survive, he launches his most heinous plot yet: to seize a child fathered by Sesshomaru or InuYasha and use it as his new host body. // Eventual InuYasha/Marvel's Avengers crossover.  Lots of action and explicit sex, with the sex delivered through several different combinations of characters.  List of sex scenes in Chapter 1.  Now with metal soundtrack!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Year Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twelve years have passed since InuYasha and his 'pack' began their journey across Japan to find and destroy Naraku and his Shikon no Tama.  To support themselves along the way, they accept demon-slaying work.  InuYasha and pack save a small village in the Japanese countryside from a brood of mantis demons.

**Full disclaimer:**

  1. InuYasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi; I own no part of it. I write this story for recreational purposes only and make no financial profit from it.
  2. The Avengers (Marvel) belongs to Marvel Studios; I own no part of it. I write this story for recreational purposes only and make no financial profit from it.
  3. “A Twist in the Myth” is the title of the 2006 studio album by German band Blind Guardian, labeled by Nuclear Blast; I do not own the album. I write this story for recreational purposes only and make no financial profit from it.  I selected “A Twist in the Myth” as the story title because it will serve as an alternative ending to InuYasha, a “twist” in InuYasha’s “myth.”  Some lyrics from the song “Fly” on the album reminded me of Kagura’s fate and some lyrics from the song “Another Stranger Me” reminded me of InuYasha’s relationship with his full demon self.
  4. All songs referenced are not my property, but are the property of their respective performing groups and recording labels, listed below.



**List of songs referenced, by chapter:**

  * **Chapter 1: Year Thirteen**


  1. Blind Guardian – Imaginations from the Other Side (1995) – Imaginations from the Other Side. Label: Virgin/Century Media.
  2. Judas Priest – Hell Bent for Leather (1979) – Delivering the Goods. Label: Columbia.


  * **Chapter 2: Within an Inn (Sex Happens)**


  1. Black Sabbath – Mob Rules (1981) – Turn Up the Night. Label: Vertigo/Warner Bros.
  2. Edguy – Kingdom of Madness (1997) – Paradise. Label: AFM.


  * **Chapter 3: Make Love, Not War**


  1. Uriah Heep – Demons and Wizards (1972) – The Wizard. Label: Bronze/Island/Mercury.


  * **Chapter 4: Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village - pt. 1**


  1. Dark Tranquillity – The Gallery (1995) – Mine is the Grandeur…/…of Melancholy Burning. Label: Osmose.
  2. Iron Maiden – s/t (1980) – Prowler. Label: EMI/Harvest/Capitol.


  * **Chapter 5: Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village - pt. 2**


  1. Arch Enemy – Stigmata (1998) – Sinister Mephisto. Label: Century Media.
  2. Darkane – Rusted Angel (1998) – Bound. Label: Relapse.


  * **Chapter 6: Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village - pt. 3**


  1. Darkane – Expanding Senses (2002) – Imaginary Entity. Label: Nuclear Blast America.
  2. Darkane – The Sinister Supremacy (2013) – The Sinister Supremacy. Label: Prosthetic Records.


  * **Chapter 7: Damage Control - pt. 1**


  1. Riot – Narita (1979) – Hot for Love. Label: Victor/Capitol.
  2. Savatage – Power of the Night (1985) – Hard for Love. Label: Atlantic.


  * **Chapter 8: Damage Control - pt. 2**


  1. Nevermore – Dead Heart in a Dead World (2000) – Narcosynthesis. Label: Century Media.
  2. Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony (2010) – The Wicked Symphony. Label: Nuclear Blast.


  * **Chapter 9: Reconciliation with a Priestess**


  1. Savatage – Hall of the Mountain King (1987) – Hall of the Mountain King. Label: Atlantic.
  2. Motörhead – Inferno (2004) – In the Black. Label: SPV GmbH/Sanctuary.


  * **Chapter 10: Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 1**


  1. Opeth – Ghost Reveries (2005) – Ghost of Perdition. Label: Roadrunner.


  * **Chapter 11: Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 2**


  1. Angel Witch – s/t (1980) – Angel Witch. Label: Bronze.


  * **Chapter 12: Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 3**


  1. Blind Guardian – A Twist in the Myth (2006) – Fly. Label: Nuclear Blast.


  * **Chapter 13: Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 4**


  1. Dark Tranquillity – The Mind’s I (1997) – Dreamlore Degenerate. Label: Osmose.
  2. Dark Tranquillity – The Mind’s I (1997) – Hedon. Label: Osmose.


  * **Chapter 14: Another Day, Another Oni**


  1. Blind Guardian – Imaginations from the Other Side (1995) – Bright Eyes. Label: Virgin/Century Media.
  2. Overkill – From the Underground and Below (1997) – Little Bit O’ Murder. Label: CMC.
  3. Diamond Head – Lightning to the Nations (1980) – Am I Evil? Label: Happy Face.


  * **Chapter 15: Hanyou Ascension – pt. 1**


  1. Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony (2010) – Dying for an Angel. Label: Nuclear Blast.
  2. Edguy – The Savage Poetry (2000) – Key to My Fate. Label: AFM.


  * **Chapter 16: Hanyou Ascension – pt. 2**


  1. Darkane – Demonic Art (2008) – Wrath Connection. Label: Nuclear Blast/Massacre.
  2. Edguy – Hellfire Club (2004) – Under the Moon. Label: Nuclear Blast.


  * **Chapter 17: Relapse – pt. 1**


  1. Dark Tranquillity – The Mind’s I (1997) – Constant. Label: Osmose.


  * **Chapter 18: Relapse – pt. 2**


  1. Demons & Wizards – Touched by the Crimson King (2005) – Dorian. Label: Steamhammer.
  2. Dark Tranquillity – Skydancer (1993) – Through Ebony Archways. Label: Spinefarm.


  * **Chapter 19: Of a Miko and a Taijiya**


  1. Opeth – Pale Communion (2014) – Eternal Rains Will Come. Label: Roadrunner.
  2. Cauldron – Chained to the Nite (2009) – The Leaven/Fermenting Enchantress. Label: Earache.


  * **Chapter 20: Of a Miko, a Taijiya, and their Voyeurs - pt. 1**


  1. Dark Tranquillity - Atoma (2016) - Clearing Skies.  Label: Century Media.
  2. Rainbow - Long Live Rock 'n' Roll (1978) - Lady of the Lake.  Label: Polydor.


  * **Chapter 21: Of a Miko, a Taijiya, and their Voyeurs - pt. 2**


  1. Opeth - Still Life (1999) - Face of Melinda.  Label: Peaceville.
  2. Cauldron - Burning Fortune (2011) - Serpent Sorceress.  Label: Earache.
  3. Dark Tranquillity - Fiction (2007) - The Mundane and the Magic.  Label: Century Media.



**Sex scenes:**

  * **Chapter 2: Within an Inn (Sex Happens)**



Setting: Kotobukiya inn.  Night.

  1. InuYasha/Kagome/Shizu (Kagome & Shizu oral on InuYasha)
  2. Miroku/Sango (Sango cowgirl on Miroku)
  3. Adult Shippo/adult Shiori (Shippo missionary on Shiori)
  4. InuYasha/Shizu (InuYasha missionary on Shizu)
  5. Miroku/Sango (69)
  6. Adult Shippo/adult Shiori/adult Shippo (Shippo and magic copy of Shippo DP Shiori)
  7. InuYasha/Kagome/Shizu (InuYasha in Kagome from behind, Kagome kiss/grope with Shizu)
  8. InuYasha/Shizu (InuYasha oral on Shizu)
  9. InuYasha/Kagome (InuYasha oral on Kagome)


  * **Chapter 3: Make Love, Not War**



Setting: Hilltop near Kotobukiya.  Night.

  1. Sesshomaru/adult Rin/InuYasha (Sesshomaru and InuYasha grind on Rin through clothes. Mild yaoi.)


  * **Chapter 4: Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village, pt. 1**



Setting: Shinto shrine worship hall.  Night.

  1. Sayaka/4-5 unnamed men (Sayaka oral and hand on men)
  2. Unnamed miko/4-5 unnamed men (x9) (9 unnamed miko oral and hand on 4-5 men each)
  3. Byakuya solo


  * **Chapter 5: Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village, pt. 2**



Setting: Bath house in back of Shinto shrine.  Night.

  1. Naraku/Sayaka (Sayaka suspended from bath house ceiling by Naraku’s tentacles, Naraku in Sayaka from front. Non-consensual!
  2. Byakuya/unnamed miko (x9) (Byakuya and eight magic copies of Byakuya in 9 unnamed miko from front while miko are restrained to bath house wall. Unnamed miko impregnated by Byakuya.  Non-consensual!)


  * **Chapter 6: Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village, pt. 3**



Setting: Bath house in back of Shinto shrine.  Night.

  1. Naraku/Sayaka/Byakuya (Naraku and Byakuya DP Sayaka, Sayaka impregnated by Byakuya. Non-consensual!)
  2. Naraku/unnamed miko (x9) (Naraku uses tentacles on unnamed miko during Sayaka DP. Naraku then uses tentacles to murder them by injecting semen into their lungs and allowing them to drown.  Non-consensual and extremely sadistic!)


  * **Chapter 7: Damage Control, pt. 1**



Setting: Mountain cave near Kotobukiya.  Night.

  1. Sesshomaru/Rin (Rin oral on Sesshomaru, Sesshomaru oral on Rin, Sesshomaru in Rin missionary & from behind. Sesshomaru anal play on Rin.)



Setting: Kotobukiya inn bath.  Early morning.

  1. Sango solo w/sex toy
  2. InuYasha/Sango (InuYasha in Sango missionary, InuYasha oral on Sango)


  * **Chapter 9: Reconciliation with a Priestess**



Setting: Bath in Naraku’s castle.  Early morning.

  1. Byakuya solo
  2. Byakuya/Sayaka (Sayaka oral on Byakuya, Byakuya oral on Sayaka, Byakuya in Sayaka from front in standing position, Sayaka on Byakuya cowgirl)


  * **Chapter 13: Resurrection of the Wind, pt. 4**



Setting: Naraku’s castle, incarnation birthing chamber beneath castle.  Early morning.

  1. Naraku/Kagura/Byakuya (Naraku oral on Kagura, Naraku in Kagura missionary, Kagura oral on Byakuya. Dubious consent.)
  2. Naraku/Byakuya/Kagura (Naraku in Byakuya from behind, Byakuya in Kagura missionary. Dubious consent.  Yaoi!)


  * **Chapter 17: Relapse**



Setting: Naraku’s castle, incarnation birthing chamber beneath castle.  Late morning/early noon.

  1. Naraku/Kagura/Byakuya (Naraku and Byakuya DP on Kagura.)


  * **Chapter 20: Of a Miko, a Taijiya, and their Voyeurs - pt. 1**



Setting: Forest hot spring somewhere near east coast of Honshu.  Late morning/early noon.

  1. Kohaku/Kikyo.  (Kohaku missionary of Kikyo.  Scene continued in pt. 2.)


  * **Chapter 21: Of a Miko, a Taijiya, and their Voyeurs - pt. 2**



Setting: Byakuya's bedroom in Naraku's castle.  Early noon.

  1. Byakuya/Sayaka.  (Byakuya missionary & oral on Sayaka.)



Setting: Forest hot spring somewhere near Honshu's east coast.  Early noon.

  1. Kohaku/Kikyo.  (Kohaku missionary on Kikyo.  Continued from pt. 1.)



Setting: Forest many miles away from Kohaku and Kikyo.  Early noon.

  1. Byakuya/Kagura.  (Byakuya in Kagura from front against tree, Byakuya oral on Kagura before & after.)



~~~~

 

_April 1556_

**(Soundtrack: Blind Guardian – Imaginations from the Other Side)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc-URIIbJrM** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc-URIIbJrM)

            The Musashi plain of Japan in its _Sengoku Jidai_ , feudal Warring States Era, reverberated with life as winter had given way to spring.  The trees of vast deciduous forests undamaged by human industrialization still centuries away were flush with leaves and fields of wildflowers had begun to bloom, filling the country air with a clean, lively scent.  At the edge of one such forest, very near to a small farming village specializing in rice production and the raising of some cattle, a slender figure dressed in red garments tailored from the fireproof hide of a ‘Fire Rat’ stood atop one of the uppermost branches of a tall, old oak.  His waist-length mane of thick, silky-soft ivory hair tumbled slightly in a breeze that filtered through the leaves on the tree branches around him.  Two triangular, dog-like ears, like those of a Siberian husky and covered in fine, white fur, sat atop his head, positioned behind the parting in his hair that marked where his tussled, flowing bangs began.  His ears twitched and rotated searchingly while his golden eyes scanned the forest canopy and sunset horizon before him.

            Turning his attention away from the panoramic view before him, InuYasha, half-demon second son of a very powerful _daiyoukai_ , or great demon named Toga, known as the _Inu no Taisho_ , Commander of the Dogs, looked down to see his friends gathered on the mossy forest floor below him, checking their weapons and equipment before the coming battle.  His ‘pack,’ as the dog-minded part of him liked to think of them, numbered seven.

            First was Higurashi Kagome, formidable Shinto _miko_ , or shrine maiden and InuYasha’s intended wife.  She would be born in the year 1982 and at the age of fifteen, she would travel more than 400 years into the past via a magic well known as the ‘Bone Eater’ to meet InuYasha and begin a bizarre, wild adventure with him and the rest of their pack.  Fair-skinned, raven-haired, and blessed with ethereal blue eyes, she wore a Shinto miko’s traditional outfit, a red _hakama_ and white _haori_.

            Second was Hasegawa Miroku, a Buddhist _houshi_ , or monk, though his title belied his lecherous behavior.  His main bad habit was to ask every single young, attractive woman he met to bear his child and if given half a chance, grope their behinds when they weren’t looking.  Character defects aside, he was InuYasha’s best friend.  Slightly tan-skinned and violet-eyed, he wore his black hair in a short, low ponytail.  He wore the blue and black robes common to Japanese monks of his era.

            Third was Aozaki Sango, a female _youkai taijiya_ , professional demon hunter and longtime friend of InuYasha and Kagome, as well as Miroku's intended wife.  Miroku’s lecherous habits often earned her ire, at least when they weren’t directed at _her._   Since her relationship with him had progressed to the physical level as well as the romantic, privately she welcomed his advances happily.  Fair-skinned like Kagome, Sango’s powerful, athletic figure bore many scars from a long career of demon hunting, most of them concealed beneath her form-fitting, lightly-armored glossy black taijiya bodysuit.  Her eyes were a rich, dark brown as was her hair, which she wore in a high ponytail that reached down to the center of her back.

            Fourth was Shippo, a _kitsune_ , humanoid fox demon without surname whom InuYasha and Kagome had befriended when he was a child.  He had since grown into a late teenager, retaining his characteristic “fox feet” into maturity.  Paler in tone than even the fair Kagome or Sango, he wore his auburn hair up in a short bun tied with a blue bow, and his emerald eyes usually shone with some degree of foxlike mischief.  Maturity had made him devilishly handsome, making him enormously popular among similarly-aged human girls wherever he and the pack traveled, though he politely excused himself from their attentions, never taking advantage as Miroku once might have.  He wore a blue hakama tailored for his foxlike lower legs and a fur vest over a haori with white leaf patterns sewn in.

            Fifth was Kirara, a _neko_ , a quadripedal, twin-tailed fire cat demon and loyal companion to Sango since Sango was born.  She had two forms; in the first, her size and demeanor was that of an ordinary housecat.  In the other, her size and demeanor were akin to that of an Ice Age _Smilodon Fatalis_ , sabre-toothed tiger.  This was the form in which she and Sango went into battle.  She could transform between the two states at will in very little time, so she was hardly vulnerable even in her housecat state.  Her demonic nature allowed her to fly, giving herself and Sango great mobility at all times.

            Sixth and seventh, respectively were Shizu, human widow of a bat daiyoukai similar to InuYasha's father named Tsukuyomaru, and Shiori, Shizu’s half-demon daughter by Tsukuyomaru.  Shizu and Shiori were not present with the pack; they remained temporarily behind inside the nearby village at InuYasha's instruction.  Shizu had fair skin and black hair like Kagome and eyes like Sango’s whereas Shiori had inherited ghostly white hair and a naturally darker complexion from her demon father, her eyes a strange, alluring magenta.  Shizu and Shiori had experienced daily abuse and discrimination from their neighbors in their home village and decided together to leave, traveling with InuYasha and his friends.  Shiori had grown close to Shippo and with Shizu’s blessing, as well as InuYasha and Kagome’s, the two young demons had begun an energetic physical relationship.

            Together, InuYasha and his pack had entered the thirteenth year of their quest to destroy a vile demon named Naraku and to reassemble a magic jewel known as the _Shikon no Tama_ , Sacred Jewel of Four Souls which, during the course of removing it from the custody of a demonic bird, Kagome had accidentally shattered into dozens of tiny shards.  The jewel had been the reason Naraku entered their lives.  Naraku, an amalgamation of many demons coalesced around the body of a human bandit, sought the jewel for himself to increase his demonic power and to make a wish upon it, a goal shared by virtually every other demon in Japan.  Unlike them, however, he had the intelligence and psychotic ambition to do absolutely anything needed to get it.

            The jewel had once been in the care of the miko Kikyo, InuYasha's lover at one time and the woman from which Kagome had been reincarnated.  Kikyo's duty as a miko was to protect the Shikon no Tama from those who would use it for evil.  By its legendary reputation, InuYasha had heard of the jewel and its alleged ability to grant wishes.  He sought it to make himself a full demon, a desire which stemmed from his experiences growing up as a half-demon, shunned and hunted by humans and demons alike.  Upon encountering Kikyo, InuYasha fell in love with her and his desire changed.  No longer did he want to be a full demon; he wanted to be human so that he could marry Kikyo, live happily and start a family with her.

            Using his dark magic to pose as Kikyo, then as InuYasha, Naraku employed a terrible deception to turn InuYasha and Kikyo against each other.  Having fallen in love, InuYasha and Kikyo had agreed to meet and make a wish upon the magic jewel to transform InuYasha into a full human, devoid of demonic blood, so that they could marry and live together.  While posing as InuYasha, Naraku inflicted mortal wounds on Kikyo as she made her way to the place she had agreed to meet InuYasha at and stole the jewel from her, returning it to her home village of Edo, where it was usually kept.  Rather than keep it for himself right away, he returned it to its customary storage location in the hopes that InuYasha and Kikyo might fight to the death over it, preferring that the jewel's beauty be 'tainted by malice.'  Immediately afterward, he posed as Kikyo and attacked InuYasha.  Concluding that Kikyo had betrayed him and that the jewel had not left Edo, InuYasha entered Edo and took the jewel from its residents by force, causing the real, gravely wounded Kikyo to shoot him with an arrow loaded with her purifying magic, an arrow that would pin and seal him to a tree known as _Goshinboku_ , the God Tree.

            The injuries Kikyo sustained from Naraku would prove fatal.  Just before she died, Kikyo ordered her sister Kaede to cremate the jewel with her body so that it could not fall into the wrong hands, unknowingly thwarting Naraku's ploy to acquire it.  Nearly 500 years later, Kagome would be born and the Shikon jewel would re-manifest itself within her body, as she was Kikyo's reincarnation.  She would be born into the Higurashi family that oversaw a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, the megalopolis that the simple Edo would become.  The shrine was co-located with the Goshinboku tree and a supposedly empty but heavily sealed well known as the Bone Eater.  Shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Kagome would be pulled down the Bone Eater well by a demon that lurked within it and be transported back through time to encounter InuYasha while he hung from the Goshinboku, hanging from the arrow Kikyo had shot into him fifty years before.  Events would see the Shikon jewel removed from her body and before an opportunistic crow demon could escape with it, she shattered it with an inadvertently well-placed arrow.  The shards rained down to the ground in an evenly-distributed, spherical pattern, following ballistic trajectories that placed them all over the Japanese main island of Honshu.

            Thus, InuYasha became Kagome's retainer, of sorts.  Still believing that Kikyo had betrayed him and harboring distrust toward humanity in general, he acted with hostility toward Kagome, even going as far as to threaten her life in order to acquire the few shards of the Sacred Jewel that she had collected immediately after it exploded.  Kikyo's younger sister Kaede, having become a miko herself during the fifty years after Kikyo's death, devised a magical necklace that would ‘subdue’ InuYasha with unintentionally hilarious effect.  Kagome could activate it with a single word: _Sit!_   While InuYasha chased Kagome to take her jewel shards from her by force, Kaede used her Shinto magic to guide the necklace around InuYasha's neck.  Kagome shouted the activation word, and to the ground InuYasha plummeted, suddenly held immobile and completely helpless.  Being under Kagome's control, InuYasha joined her begrudgingly on her journey to collect the shards of the shattered Shikon jewel and reassemble it, leading to their encounters with their future friends and with Naraku.

            Twelve years later, after many battles against Naraku and his various ‘incarnations,’ InuYasha found himself in his current situation.  He and his pack were preparing for battle.  However, on this day it was not against Naraku, the various copies of himself he had made over the years, or the assorted other monsters he enjoyed deploying against them.  The residents of the nearby farming village of _Kotobukiya_ had hired them to repel a brood of vicious mantis demons that harassed them regularly, seeking food in the form of their cattle and pigs and sometimes, the residents themselves.  InuYasha and company had come across Kotobukiya during their travels up and down Honshu in search of Naraku.  They found that having fought against demons of the very sort that plagued Kotobukiya, they had acquired unique experience and skills that, given the era, were marketable and in high demand.  Therefore, they supported themselves on long expeditions by offering their services to villages, townships, and even individuals in situations similar to that of the beleaguered farming village, usually requesting food and shelter as payment.  Their latest search for Naraku or at least Byakuya, his sole surviving incarnation, had entered its second week.

            Scanning the horizon in a cursory manner, InuYasha looked down to the forest floor below and called out to his pack.  According to Kotobukiya's populace, the mantids usually came around dusk, which, given the ever-lowering position of the sun in the sky, lay less than half an hour away.  "Hey!  These mantis demons should be here soon.  Everybody ready?"

            To answer InuYasha, Kagome first looked between herself, Miroku, Sango, Shippo, and Kirara.  Miroku sat on a fallen tree trunk, his enchanted monk staff leaning up against it next to him as he counted and arranged the similarly-enchanted demon purifying _ofuda_ , or seals he carried in a series of hinged wooden boxes affixed to the sash he wore around his waist, outside of his dark blue robes.  He had bonded each seal to thin, specially-balanced metal plates, which allowed him to throw them with good distance and accuracy.  They exploded on contact with demonic flesh. 

            Miroku possessed a third weapon, the _Kazaana_ , or Wind Tunnel, a demonic curse he had inherited from his late father.  The curse had been placed on his father’s father, his paternal grandfather by Naraku decades before; Naraku designed it to affect not only Miroku’s grandfather, but all of his male descendants.  It manifested as a void in the center of his right palm.  He kept it sealed with a cloth gauntlet and when he unsealed it, it acted as a portal to a tremendous vacuum, possibly another dimension of space entirely, able to suck in virtually everything in a wide arc out to a distance of around a hundred yards.  He was the third to carry it; his grandfather and father had carried it and were eventually consumed by it.  The same would someday happen to him, unless he found a way to lift the curse.

            Sango sat beside Miroku on the log, servicing her own weaponry, as well.  She poured a corrosion-preventative oil from a small flask onto the blade of her katana, using a cloth to spread the oil up and down the blade's length.  Her katana was her secondary weapon; her primary was the mighty _Hiraikotsu_ , a very large and heavy boomerang carved from the bones of a powerful demon that she had assisted her late taijiya father in slaying, back when she was a pre-teen demon exterminator in training.  Like Miroku's seals, Hiraikotsu was enchanted and while flying and spinning at full speed, it could move through demonic flesh as a white-hot blade through butter.

            Shippo, for his part, carried only a single, mid-length katana.  At Sango's example and personal recommendation, he worked to oil it as well.  However, his primary weapon came from the demonic energy he carried inside him: _kitsune-bi_ , or Fox Fire.  Twelve years of travelling with InuYasha and the others had transformed him from a mere 'runt,' as InuYasha once liked to call him, into a competent, young adult fox demon warrior.  His control over his Fox Fire had improved to the point that he could cast it from his palms in great, scorching gouts of green flame or concentrate it into javelin-like bolts of what he called 'hard fire,' with which he could penetrate even the thickest demonic hide or exoskeleton to deadly effect.

            Kagome herself carried a traditional wooden longbow; she had bought it in her own time and brought it back for use in the Sengoku Jidai in order to benefit from her time’s superior material engineering and construction techniques.  Already, she had ensured that its string was taut and securely fastened, ready to go.  Over the years, she had developed the upper-body strength to use the bow effectively and with it she enjoyed great range in combat.  When she charged them up with her demon purifying energy, or _reiki_ , the arrows she launched from the bow could fell the even largest demon with single shots.

            Satisfied that everyone had completed the necessary preparations, Kagome called back up to her hanyou love.  "We're ready, InuYasha!"

            InuYasha nodded and returned his attention to the horizon before him.  After just a few minutes, his triangular dog ears perked up, hearing a sound in the distance that grew gradually louder.  It was a low, droning hum, the sound of untold dozens of insectoid wings beating through the air.  He narrowed his golden eyes, able to see several miles by his superior half-demon eyesight, and spotted the first mantids coming into his view.

            The first ones were the small ones, the front line of the brood.  On the ground, they would stand at 'only' twice the height of a man, their chitinous exoskeletons leaf green in color and their fluttering wings translucent amber.  With their serrated raptorial forelegs folded close to their upper bodies, they chirped between each other and rotated their grotesque triangular heads from side to side constantly to keep their formation together and avoid mid-air collisions.  Each chirp they made was a sharp, piercing screech that could make even the hardiest samurai’s blood run cold.  And then the big one came into InuYasha's view...

            The giant mantis demon dwarfed any one of its smaller kin by at least five fold.  By the light of sunset, it cast a huge, skewed, totally opaque shadow on the forest canopy passing below it.  Whereas its minions were green in color, its own body was shining, glossy black, its wings bright red, an ominous color scheme that indicated great lethality.  The sound of its wings pushing through the air, propelling it forward and keeping it aloft, was louder, lower-pitched, much more menacing than that of the others.

            InuYasha called down to his friends again.  "They're coming.  Let's move!"

**(Soundtrack: Judas Priest – Delivering the Goods)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9eMoCsm-c8** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9eMoCsm-c8)

            Kirara leapt from her seat on the fallen log she shared with Miroku and Sango, transforming into her giant 'battle cat' form.  She gave a strong, feline yowl as a maelstrom of magic demonic flame enveloped her cream-furred body, obscuring her as her body increased in size and weight from ‘housecat’ to ‘sabretooth tiger’ in mere seconds.  The flame dissipated to leave her standing before her friends at almost seven feet tall, fifteen feet long and weighing more than a thousand pounds.

            Sango and Miroku leapt atop Kirara and by her neko magic, Kirara rose off the ground toward the forest canopy above, harmless neko flames burning around her giant paws.  Shippo used his own kitsune magic to transform, as well.  Once, Shippo transformed into a cartoonish, googly-eyed balloon-like 'thing' to provide his friends with aerial transport.  Now, he transformed into a long, sleek, quadripedal and far more intimidating 'fire fox from hell,' analogous to Kirara's battle cat form.  Unlike Kirara, he could use his magic to materialize a saddle over his back to provide his rider with greater stability and comfort.  Kagome mounted Shippo's saddle and they followed after Sango and Miroku as they rode Kirara.

            InuYasha leapt down from his perch and fell more than thirty feet to land in a neat crouch on the forest floor without pain or injury.  He broke out into a run of blinding speed, his ivory mane streaming behind him like a silver river as he darted between the oncoming trees.  To a stationary observer, he would have appeared as a streaking, red-and-white blur as he negotiated the various obstacles the forest presented to him.  After a few moments of dodging and vaulting, he emerged from the forest to enter an open, grassy field with his friends flying directly overhead.  Together, they had placed themselves strategically so that they lay directly between Kotobukiya and the mantids in the insectoid demons' most likely vector of approach, and they would soon meet them head-on.

            Shippo and Kirara slowed down and backed away to give InuYasha some room to initiate battle.  Below them, the hanyou warrior gripped the sheath of Tetsuseiga, _Iron Crushing Fang_ , the sword he carried at his hip in one hand and the hilt of it in the other.  With the sky clear above him, he leapt high and as he ascended, he extracted Tetsuseiga from its sheath, demonic magic transforming it from an old, pitted blade of rusty steel into a gleaming, ten-foot long _fang_ made of an alloy of demonic origin: it was a fang from his own father.

            “ _Kaze no Kizu!_ ” InuYasha roared mid-air, raising Tetsuseiga high and swinging it down at the mantis demons to unleash the Kaze no Kizu, the _Wound of the Wind_.  Four talons of demonic energy shot forth from the giant sword and seared through the air to rake over the mantis demon flight with devastating effect.  The smaller mantids moved to cover their leader, maneuvering to throw themselves directly into the Wound’s path, utterly disregarding of their own safety as if their individual survival instincts were suddenly overridden.  Pummeled by the Wound, their bodies disintegrated messily, insectoid limbs and innards flying off in every direction, but the rest of the flight pressed on.

            By this time, InuYasha had hit the ground, giving his friends an opening of their own.  Kirara accelerated, broke away from Shippo, and swooped in from one side so that Sango could launch Hiraikotsu.  Behind Sango, Miroku ducked his head down low next to the taijiya’s shapely hips so that he wouldn’t get smacked by her undeservingly.  Sometimes, he _did_ deserve it.  Sango cocked Hiraikotsu backward, winding up and casting it forward with a tough, feminine grunt.  The mighty bone wing left her hand at incredible velocity, spinning end for end to plow into the mantis flight and inflict damage just as hideous as InuYasha’s Wound of the Wind could.  As with the Wound, the smaller mantids used their own bodies to shield the big one; this caused Hiraikotsu to veer away from the giant mantis and exit the opposite side of the flight without hitting it.

            Now Kagome took aim.  Shippo maneuvered so that he and the miko from the future flew parallel to the mantis flight, then held at constant heading, altitude and speed.  Kagome drew an arrow from the quiver slung over her back and loaded it into her bow, drawing it back against the bowstring and at the same time, feeding her reiki into it.  Kirara, Sango, and Miroku steered clear of her line of fire in the air, as did InuYasha on the ground, and once they were out of the way, Kagome added the appropriate lead on the ‘king mantis,’ held her breath to finalize her aim, and let her arrow fly.

            By her miko magic, Kagome’s arrow left her bow as more than the sum of its parts.  It shot forth as a small, metallic meteor might make planetfall, glowing bright, white blue and leaving a glittering trail behind it as it seared through the air toward its target.  The king mantis seemed able to sense its power and dove while commanding its remaining brood members to throw themselves into the arrow’s path.  The arrow blasted through the lesser mantids with ease, vaporizing them with purifying light, and over-penetrated all of them to glance across the king mantis’ body, severing one of its red wings at the root.

            The monstrous insect gave up a horrible roar of pain as its body careened out of control by the loss of a wing and the asymmetric thrust that resulted.  By this time, it had begun to pass over forest again and it careened into the trees below in a terrible splintering racket, its massive, heavy body shearing off whole tree limbs at their roots and causing all manners of wildlife to flee from the scene.  Upon the forest floor, it writhed on its back and began a grotesque, noisy effort to right itself, barely fitting between the trunks of the surrounding trees.

            At that moment, less than a mile of open rice paddy lay between the giant mantis and the village of Kotobukiya.  InuYasha recognized this and maneuvered himself so that he stood directly between the mantis and the village, ready to fight the thing off if it continued its advance.  As a precaution, he looked over a shoulder toward Kotobukiya and called out with all the breath in his lungs: “ _Shiori!_   Raise your barrier!”

            In Kotobukiya’s central square, a lovely young woman gifted with exotic caramel skin, a mane of ghostly white hair like InuYasha’s, and clad in an elegant white kimono sat kneeling with calves folded neatly in traditional Japanese fashion, her eyes closed and her face impassive with focus as she listened to the environment around her.  As the half-demon daughter of the great bat demon Tsukuyomaru, Shiori had inherited a bat’s typically incredible sense of hearing and with it, given enough concentration, she could hear the smallest of sounds at distances of up to two miles.  Thus, she was well aware of the state of the battle her friends waged against the mantis demons and she definitely heard InuYasha’s call.

            Shiori opened her eyes, each one a vibrant shade of magenta by her demonic lineage and she turned to her mother Shizu, who sat near her.  “Mother, please stay close.  The demon is near.”

            “Right,” Shizu nodded, gripping the scabbard of the katana she carried at her hip a bit tighter, though she had every confidence that InuYasha and the others would prevent the last, most powerful mantis from setting one insectoid foot in the village.  As Shiori’s mother, other than hair and skin color, she and Shiori looked stunningly alike.  The bat-girl bore much the same facial structure as her, smooth, youthful and refined.  Their bodies were also very similar in shape, except that Shizu, at age 35, was significantly more mature and slightly heavier in her chest and hips.  She wore her black hair long, gathered in a low tail at the center of her back and she wore a modest, though well-made cotton kimono, the upper half dyed dark green, the lower half dyed simple blue.  She carried her sword for defense, having learned some harsh lessons by the un-neighborly behavior of the people in her village and the dangers InuYasha and the pack encountered on a regular basis.  Though she went armed, InuYasha usually placed her and Shiori well away from areas where demon hunting combat might take place.

            In this case, InuYasha directed Shiori and Shizu to remain in Kotobukiya by Shiori’s ability to raise an incredibly durable spiritual barrier around herself.  When the time came for it, she could use it to seal the mantis demons out and the villagers in.  The lovely bat-girl stood and gathered her demonic energy about her.  She extended her palms up and outward, feeding her power out of her hands so that it coalesced into a shimmering, perfectly spherical barrier of glimmering fuchsia light.  The barrier enveloped herself and her mother; she gave a slight, feminine grunt and the barrier expanded in size rapidly to envelop the entire village, spanning nearly a half mile across.

            Seeing that Shiori had erected her barrier around Kotobukiya and better assured of its residents’ safety, InuYasha began advancing boldly through rice paddy toward the point in the treeline where the mantis had made its hard landing.  The great insectoid demon managed to flip itself onto its spined, stalky legs and used its raptorial forelegs to slash its way out of the trees and into open paddy.  Its huge, inverted triangular head rotated searchingly to sweep the field of view of its bulbous compound eyes across it surroundings, its long, whip-like antennae twitching menacingly.  It spotted InuYasha closing in on the ground, as well as Sango and Miroku atop Kirara, Kagome atop Shippo orbiting overhead.

            Kagome let off another arrow and the mantis dodged horizontally, propelling itself with its six legs and a boost from its wings to land dozens of yards away.  Kagome’s arrow sunk into watery paddy where the mantis had stood and exploded as a cannon shell, casting a messy plume of water and dirt high into the air.  InuYasha followed with another volley of the Wound of the Wind from Tetsuseiga and this time, the demon insect dodged in the vertical plane, leaping and flying high above the Wound’s arc as it raked over the ground and impacted the forest behind it. 

            The demon anticipated Sango launching her Hiraikotsu next and pre-empted her by aiming its beak-like mouth at her, Miroku, and Kirara as they flew above it, drawing in a huge intake of air and tensing visibly, and beginning to _screech_.  Its screech was charged with its demonic power and resonated with energy equal to hundreds of decibels; the very air in front of its beak seemed to vibrate, air molecules bouncing off of each other wildly and the effect propagated as a sonic fist to knock the demon slayer, warrior monk, and fire cat right out of the sky.

            Kirara veered down into the ground with a snarl, with Sango and Miroku crying out along with her.  The great fire-cat remained mindful of her passengers and kept enough control to crash-land such that they were merely tossed off her back, not thrown.  The mantis kept its screech up, pummeling all three of them into and _across_ the ground as the frequency of its attack escalated into thousands of cycles per second.

            “ _Shit!_ ” InuYasha cursed as the mantis shot his friends down with its hideous _voice_ , of all things.  The demon was alone and minus a wing, but hardly helpless.  Before it could kill Sango, Miroku, and Kirara and possibly change targets to Kagome and Shippo, InuYasha broke out into a full sprint and leapt at the mantis to swing Tetsuseiga down upon its head.  The giant demon swung around to face him and used a massive raptorial foreleg to block and deflect his sword.  At the same time, it used its other foreleg to snatch the hanyou warrior by one of his ankles and toss him away, immediately beginning to screech at _him,_ too.

            Kagome wanted desperately to intervene, but at that moment, InuYasha and the others were too close to the mantis demon for her to use her supercharged arrows safely.  Shippo’s fire attacks, however, were less dangerous.  “Shippo!” Kagome called out to the fire-fox she rode.  “Use your Hard Fire!”

            “Got it!” Shippo affirmed, his voice a distorted growl by his transformation into a giant flying fox.  Kagome hung onto his saddle tightly as he rolled and banked to dive at the mantis from a steep angle.  He opened his vulpine maw and bright, almost neon green light emanated from his throat as he produced a large, swirling ball of his demonic fox fire and spit it out directly at the mantis, followed by three more.

            InuYasha found himself completely unable to move while the mantis blasted him with its voice.  His ears had pinned back in a useless attempt to block out the sound and he could feel his eyes, bones and even his teeth rattling inside him as each wave slammed over him.  The color drained from his vision and he could feel blood pouring out of his nose as blood vessels in his sinuses broke open.  Before he could pass out and possibly die, though, Shippo’s fireballs raked over the insect’s slender abdomen and thorax, knocking it onto one of its sides with their concussive force.

            Miroku recovered enough to force himself to stand up and he shook his head to clear his vision.  This mantis demon was more dangerous then he or anyone else in the pack had anticipated.  They had to finish this quickly.  Below him, Sango sat up on the grassy earth, still dazed from the mantis’ sonic attack and though she was seeing double, her head positively spinning, she could still make out the distinctive motions of Miroku unfastening the gauntlet that he used to muzzle his Kazaana.

            “Wait…” Sango slurred, trying to reach out and grab at her beloved monk.  The Wind Tunnel was as dangerous to Miroku himself as it was to any of their enemies.  “Miroku, _wait!_ ”

            “ _Kazaana!_ ” Miroku bellowed, ripping his gauntlet away from his cursed hand and aiming his Wind Tunnel’s maw directly at the mantis and unavoidably, InuYasha as well.  Instantly, the calm air of the paddy in front of him became as that of a typhoon, flowing parallel to the ground and converging to be sucked into the voracious singularity of demonic magic at the center of Miroku’s palm.

            Miroku’s intent was not to suck the mantis into his Wind Tunnel, however.  Judging by the thing’s color scheme, it was most likely poisonous and on a few occasions in the past, he’d sucked up things that ‘disagreed’ with him.  The houshi kept Kazaana open just long enough to pull the mantis off balance so as not to consume it or more importantly, InuYasha.  The giant insect’s body had evolved for sustained flight and so it was very light for its size, making Kazaana’s suction extremely effective on it.  It screamed out as the whipping winds flowing around it toward Miroku toppled it over and began dragging it along the ground.

            Miroku sealed Kazaana before it could take the mantis in.  He then turned and stooped down to pull the still-dizzied Sango up onto her feet, slinging her over his shoulders and grabbing Kirara, now unconscious and back in her “housecat” form, under a free arm.  He began to run from the mantis as fast as he could as it tumbled toward him, yelling back behind him: “ _InuYasha!_   Hit it now!”

            The mantis’s screeching had stopped, allowing InuYasha to get back onto his feet.  Miroku, Sango, and Kirara were clear of the demonic insect and so he did not hesitate to use Tetsuseiga.  “ _Die, motherfucker!”_ he roared.  The mantis righted itself just in time to feel the white-hot plasma of the Kaze no Kizu ripping over it, and it wailed in agony as the demonic energy blasted away all three of its remaining wings and four of its legs.

            InuYasha leapt away from the crippled mantis to allow Kagome to finish it.  Above him, Shippo banked to put the mantis at the center of his turn, simplifying Kagome’s aiming process.  The miko from the future planted a purifying arrow straight through the demon’s thorax, followed by another in its abdomen, each one punching through hard, armor-like exoskeleton with ease to vaporize the critical internal structures and tissues beneath.  She then finished it off by delivering a third arrow to its head.  With only a smoking, oozing stump where its head had once been, the demon’s body twitched involuntarily for a few moments longer, then stilled.  It was dead.

            Moments later, Kagome and Shippo landed near InuYasha.  Kagome hopped off of her kitsune friend’s back and ran to her hanyou love, immediately noticing the blood running from his nose.  “InuYasha!  Are you all right?”

            InuYasha scoffed and sheathed Tetsuseiga, wiping a thumb under his nose to look disdainfully at the dark red fluid he removed from it.  His demonic healing factor would soon repair any and all damage the mantis caused.  “Feh.  I’m _fine_ ,” he assured with some irritation, irritation not directed at Kagome.  The villagers hadn’t said anything about the big mantis demon’s ability to _yell_ someone to death.  “We should worry about the others first.”

            Fortunately, when InuYasha and Kagome came upon Miroku, Sango, and Kirara as they sat in the grass recuperating, he and she found them to be only a little disoriented from the mantis’ weaponized screech, owing to the short time they were exposed to it by InuYasha’s rapid intervention.  “Everyone okay?” InuYasha asked, studying his friends’ dispositions and searching for any indication of injury.

            Miroku shook Sango by the shoulders and she cooed in response, her voice not tinged with pain, then he gave Kirara a rub and a pet, receiving an unbearably cute _mew_ for a reply.  Smiling in relief, he looked up at InuYasha.  “We’re all right, thank God.  Thank you.”

            Shippo transformed from his fire-fox form to his humanoid one in a puff of magic kitsune smoke.  He moved to join his friends, glancing at the village they’d all just saved in the distance, noticing that the residents were beginning to peek outside their homes and step into the dirt streets.  “Guys, the villagers,” Shippo pointed at Kotobukiya.

            “Okay, good, they’re coming out,” InuYasha approved.  “Let’s get Shiori to drop the barrier and then let’s find the village elder so we can get _paid_.  Shiori!  All clear!”

            Immediately, Shiori lowered her barrier so that InuYasha and the others could enter the village along the main street.  Before they left the corpse of the last, biggest mantis behind, though, Shippo incinerated what remained with his Fox Fire.  Shiori and Shizu joined their friends just as they met with the village elder and some men who acted as his guards.  One of the guards carried two bushels of rice, one under each arm; these were part of the payment they had agreed to give to InuYasha and pack once their contract to slay the mantis demons was complete.  The elder was a grey-haired man who appeared to be in his late 50s, early 60s, clad in the simple robes of a peasant.  “InuYasha-sama!” he greeted, bowing courteously.  “You’ve done excellent work today.  Thank you.  Those demons had been threatening us for weeks.”

            InuYasha though, felt hardly courteous in return, forgoing a return of the elder’s bow.  He was visibly angry.  “Tell me this: did you or anyone else in this village of yours have any idea that the thing we just killed could _scream_ us to death?” he fumed, causing the elder to recoil slightly and his guards to tense up.

            Kagome grasped at one of InuYasha’s arms in concern.  The hanyou warrior was always a little hot-headed, she knew, but the spring season affected his temperament more than others.  Breeding season for animals and youkai based on animals was in full swing, and the scent of hot, heavy reproductive activities on the wind gave InuYasha a great deal of… _energy_ , both on the battlefield and in bed with her.  Sometimes, in the latter case, she needed… _assistance_ from her ‘girlfriends’ – Sango, Shiori, and Shizu, the other female members of the pack.  This came with Miroku and Shippo’s blessing, of course, and Kagome knew that even with access to four healthy, willing women, InuYasha could take all of them repeatedly in one, blisteringly hot night.  Sometimes even that wasn’t enough, and whatever energy he had left didn’t always escape him in the best way.  “InuYasha, please, it’s okay,” she consoled.

            InuYasha looked back to Kagome and the pleading expression in her big, beautiful blue eyes worked the proper effect on him.  He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down; he knew he was still high on the adrenaline rush he got from battle and as an inu hanyou affected by breeding season, an inu hanyou fathered by one of the single most powerful and virile demons to have ever existed in Japan, he had four _ripe_ females around him at that very moment.  Guilt overcame him and he finally returned the elder’s bow.

            “Please forgive me, sir,” InuYasha apologized, bowing low.  “I didn’t mean to accuse you or your villagers of anything.”

            The elder and his guards relaxed and the elder’s brows furrowed thoughtfully.  “I understand and I accept your apology.  Truthfully, we had no idea the largest mantis had such a power.  To date, we had usually only seen the small ones,” he said, adding: “You are half-demon, are you not?  In my time, I have seen how this season affects the living things in this land, demonic life in particular, and the ladies of your group are so very comely.  Please be assured that I take no offense.”

            Kagome, Sango, Shiori and Shizu blushed simultaneously as the elder commented on their beauty, while Miroku and Shippo could only smirk at each other.  InuYasha rose from his bow and the elder turned to the guard holding the rice bushels, taking one into his arms and presenting it to InuYasha.  “You have done an excellent service for Kotobukiya today.  As agreed, here is your payment, two bushels of rice.”

            The elder passed the first fifty-pound bushel to InuYasha and the hanyou warrior received it thankfully.  He handed it to Miroku in order to take the second from the elder.  Once the transaction was complete, InuYasha looked at the sun setting below the horizon and asked of the elder: “It’s getting late.  May we stay the night your inn?”

            The elder nodded enthusiastically.  “Of course!  With these mantis demons having driven off all of our customers, you’ll have it all to yourself.  And please, accept your stay with no cost.”

            InuYasha smiled in appreciation, and he and his pack bid the elder good night as they made their way to Kotobukiya’s inn, a simple, one-story building of wood and _shoji_ construction typical to the era and region.  The pack filed into the inn before InuYasha, and just before the hanyou entered the inn himself, he felt a twinge of sensation brushing over his awareness in such a way that only he and not the other pack members could feel it.  It was that of a very powerful demon, a _daiyoukai,_ though it did not emanate malevolent intent.  At InuYasha’s hip, Tetsuseiga gave a single vibration within its scabbard to confirm to the hanyou what he already knew. 

_So, you’re near, aren’t you, Sesshomaru?_

**-To be continued-**


	2. Within an Inn (Sex Happens)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> InuYasha and his pack enjoy themselves in the inn of the village they saved from a group of mantis demons.  They then meet to discuss their pursuit of Naraku.  Pairings: InuYasha/Kagome/Shizu, Miroku/Sango, Shippo/Shiori.

            As the sun set over Kotobukiya and the surrounding countryside, InuYasha and pack entered Kotobukiya’s inn to set in for the night.  Just as he crossed the threshold of the inn’s front door, InuYasha could feel the presence of Sesshomaru, his full-demon half-brother with whom he shared a father in the late, great Inu no Taisho, brushing against the edges of his demonic extra-sensory awareness.  At his hip, Tetsuseiga vibrated silently in its black scabbard for only him to feel.  To InuYasha, this was a message from Sesshomaru to him, meaning something like: “ _I’m near.  Expect a visit from me._ ”

            InuYasha and Sesshomaru had a tumultuous history together.  InuYasha felt that so far, they had fought with each other as many times as they had simply spoken, drawing blood on one another other on several occasions.  One of their fights, early in InuYasha’s relationship with Kagome, had even resulted in InuYasha using Tetsuseiga to sever Sesshomaru left arm as Sesshomaru attacked him in his ‘true’ giant dog demon form.  Their shared enmity stemmed from the circumstances of InuYasha’s conception, their father’s death, and the inheritance their father had left to them in the form of the demonic swords Tetsuseiga, which InuYasha had received, and _Tenseiga,_ the one Sesshomaru received.  Sesshomaru had initially coveted the Tetsuseiga as between it and Tenseiga, only Tetsuseiga could _cut_ an enemy.  Tenseiga actually _healed_ and so was useless as a weapon in battle against Naraku, InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s mutual enemy.

            By the time of InuYasha and pack’s intervention into Kotobukiya’s struggle with its marauding mantids, the matter of the swords was mostly resolved.  Assistance from Totosai, one of the Inu no Taisho’s vassals and wizard-like smith of demonic swords, had transformed Sesshomaru’s Tenseiga into a true weapon.  Totosai provided this assistance to Sesshomaru only after observing a change in Sesshomaru’s once cold heart.  Over the years and during his quest to kill Naraku independently of InuYasha, Sesshomaru encountered situations that provoked him to use Tenseiga to heal and save the lives of certain individuals he met, confirming to Totosai that he had developed or at least awoken the ability to express concern, grief, even _rage_ for someone other than himself. 

            Totosai then reforged the Tenseiga and taught Sesshomaru its ultimate offensive technique: the _Meido_ _Zangetsuha_ : Dark Path of the Dawn Moon's Wave.  In a single, almost unglamorous swipe, Sesshomaru could use it to open a _meido_ , a moon-like crescent portal directly to the netherworld and send his enemy straight through it to an instant death on the other side.  Trickery on Naraku’s part resulted in the transfer of the Meido technique from Sesshomaru’s Tenseiga to InuYasha’s Tetsuseiga.  Later, an encounter with Magatsuhi, a particularly foul demon that lurked within the Shikon jewel and given form by a portion of Naraku’s flesh, resulted in Sesshomaru regrowing his severed arm and receiving a new sword: _Bakusaiga_ , the Explosive Crushing Fang.  This left InuYasha and Sesshomaru extremely well-armed and easily capable of destroying each other. 

            Despite all this, InuYasha did not feel threatened by Sesshomaru’s presence.  He actually found it _reassuring_.  Both he and his brother had finally learned that they worked together too well to waste any more time fighting each other.  InuYasha, for his part, had a sentimental streak and couldn’t bring himself to shut Sesshomaru, one of the few links between himself and his father, out of his heart completely.  Therefore, the two of them searched for Naraku or his minions jointly, staying close enough together that they could come to each other’s aid in little time but keeping enough space so as to not constantly encounter or interfere with one another.  Sesshomaru’s call to him through the supernatural link between their swords likely heralded a discussion about their search, possibly a formation of a new strategy.  Neither InuYasha nor his pack had encountered Naraku or Byakuya, Naraku’s sole surviving incarnation in two weeks and InuYasha speculated that Sesshomaru had not, either.

            But that would come later.  With the breeding heat, InuYasha had a great deal of ‘energy’ to ‘work off,’ with Kagome, Sango, Shizu, or Shiori, not necessarily in that order and not necessarily one at a time!  With Sesshomaru nearby and with a well-established human village around him, he felt reasonably safe, safe enough to relax and let the heat take him.

            _Ba-bump_.  A wave of InuYasha’s demonic energy poured off of his body for each of his pack mates to feel, male and female alike.  The hanyou warrior stopped in the inn’s central hallway, closing his golden eyes as if in pleasure as another pulse hit.  _Ba-bump.  Ba-bump.  Ba-bump._   Each wave came in time with the quickening beat of his powerful heart and by his incredible sensitive hanyou hearing, he could hear his pack mates’ hearts beginning to speed up with mounting excitement, especially those of the women.  All turned to face InuYasha and look upon him as he indulged in his demonic nature, basking in the immense sexual energy of their pack leader and letting it seep into their bodies, heat their very blood.

**(Soundtrack: Black Sabbath – Turn Up the Night)**

**<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8kbYRS0As> **

            InuYasha opened his eyes: their whites had turned blood red with the rise of his ‘inner demon’ and their irises had turned from gold spheres to thin, animalistic slits shining with bright green light.  Daggerlike magenta stripes had formed on his handsome cheeks beneath his eyes, each one a silent indicator of his demonic lineage and _virility_.  Almost panting with increasing desire, Kagome gave a knowing smile to her pack mates and stepped up to stand close beside InuYasha, reaching up to cup his face with a hand and turn it to her.  She raised herself up onto her toes and kissed him sweetly on his lips, eliciting a pleased growl from him.

            “ _Grrr…Kagome_ ,” InuYasha intoned, his voice bestial and warped by his demonic transformation.  He could feel the warmth of Kagome’s body radiating against his through their clothes and he knew he had to have her soon.  He used one hand to cover the one she cupped to his face and slipped the other around her slim waist to bring her hips firmly against his.  “I’m okay.”

            Ordinarily, when InuYasha’s demon blood took him over, it was from extreme emotional stress, such as rage, grief or fear and resulted in him attacking those around him almost indiscriminately.  While near him, such as in his hand or at his hip, Tetsuseiga calmed his blood in such situations and kept it under control.  In this case, Tetsuseiga allowed him to transform as he was experiencing only that which was natural to him: the desire to _breed_ , and he had four very lovely, fertile, and increasingly _ready_ women within easy reach.

            The pack paired up, male to female.  As InuYasha and Kagome began to kiss and grind right there in the hallway for the rest to see, Sango gravitated toward Miroku with a provocative sway in her hips and pressed him up against the shoji wall behind him, taking his mouth with her own.  His hands found their way around to her luscious backside and he began to grope happily, shamelessly as she thrust her hips to his.  She rewarded each squeeze of his hands not with an indignant slap of her palm or a smack of Hiraikotsu, but with a happy giggle and a soft moan for more.

            With her mother watching, Shiori stepped up to the Shippo shyly, her heart racing in her chest as he smiled down at her and took her into his arms.  With her half-demon maturity, two bat-like wings, each like translucent violet silk stretched taut over a living frame of thin, yet strong female muscle and tendon, had sprouted from her back.  The growth of her wings necessitated that two long slits be cut into her kimono’s back for her them to slip through and she wore them clasped around her shoulders as a shawl.  In this moment, she unclasped them from around her shoulders and wrapped them around her kitsune lover, drawing him in as he kissed her.  Gingerly, she worked a hand down between their bodies to cup his most male area through his hakama.  Already, she could feel that he was hot and hard for her and her own body responded immediately.

            By his superhuman hearing, InuYasha could hear everyone’s heart beating nice and quick, including his own.  By his superhuman sense of smell, he could smell everyone’s arousal hanging thick in the air, growing richer by the second.  His pack’s communal foreplay was getting serious rapidly.  He watched Miroku and Sango excuse themselves into one open bedroom while Shippo and Shiori took another.  For his own part, InuYasha had Kagome gazing up him with unrestrained hunger glowing in her ethereal blue eyes as she ground her palm against his now massive erection through his hakama.  He began to thrust against her hand in wordless encouragement.  Shizu, being the odd woman out, had the freedom to choose who she wanted to join in with.  Boldly, she selected InuYasha and Kagome, knowing that the handsome inu hanyou had more than enough energy for the miko and herself, and began to tug them by their hands into a bedroom of their own.  Kirara, unable to join in the festivities due to her incompatible physiology, left the inn for the time being, perhaps in search of some ‘fun’ of her own.

            Kagome took InuYasha’s lips with her own in a searing hot kiss, smiling as she drank in a male moan from him.  She could feel hot, creamy liquid arousal building up between her thighs beneath her miko garb and she knew InuYasha could smell it with that sensitive half-demon nose of his.  She could see Shizu leading him and her into a nearby bedroom and suddenly, InuYasha stopped them both.

            “ _Wait_ ,” InuYasha rasped as he summoned every ounce of self-control he could to break his kiss with Kagome.  His body was hot, throbbing, and he knew he needed relief soon and possibly several times after that.  “Everybody, wait.  _Protection._ ”

            Kagome stopped herself before she and Shizu could pass the point of no return, push InuYasha to a futon, and fuck him into next week.  Panting, she silently cursed at herself for forgetting about the protection they all needed to prevent her and the other women from getting pregnant.  She knew this was a testament to the profound effect InuYasha had on her during his breeding season.  His body positively _oozed_ with virility, speaking to her at some unseen, primal level to tell her how good and hard he could knock her up if she let him.  His raw sex appeal could overwhelm her higher reasoning with ease.  The other members of the pack, both male and female, reacted to InuYasha’s heat as well.  Sango, Shiori and Shizu experienced what Kagome did, the burning, heart-racing need to be _bred_ , while Miroku and Shippo felt the all-consuming urge to provide each of them with their seed over and over until new life began within them.

            Thus, Kagome slipped a trembling hand into a pocket in her red miko hakama and produced three rectangular slips of paper.  These were what Kagome called ‘contraceptive sutras,’ each an enchanted Japanese ideogram of Miroku’s design printed onto adhesive paper from her own time.  When applied to a woman’s belly, directly over her womb, the sutras would prevent demonic sperm such as InuYasha’s or Shippo’s from fertilizing that woman’s egg by magically sapping its reproductive energy at the cellular level.  Conversely, it would also prevent a demonic female, such as Shiori, from being bred by either a demon or human male, as in the latter case, the sutra needed only to work on her demonic egg to prevent conception.  The sutras would continue to work for days on end, well in excess of the potential stamina of anyone in the pack, including InuYasha.  Kagome handed the first sutra to Shizu, the second to Shiori, and kept the third for herself.

            Miroku and Sango, though, could not benefit from the sutras’ effect, due to the fact that they were both human.  Therefore, Kagome reached into her yellow backpack and tossed an entire _box_ of condoms to them, prompting InuYasha to declare: “Okay, continue.”

            InuYasha and pack weren’t the slightest bit embarrassed as they resumed their activities in their respective pairings or, in the case of InuYasha, Kagome and Shizu, trio.  They were all dear friends and their struggle against Naraku had forged them into lovers.  Together, they had realized that to deny themselves to each other, especially during breeding season when all were hot and bothered at once, was not only nearly impossible, but counter-productive.  They worked hard, risking their lives on an almost daily basis for various reasons and now, they would _play_ hard.

            Shizu tugged InuYasha and Kagome into one bedroom, while Miroku and Sango took another.  Shippo and Shiori entered a third and almost all at once, the doors to all three rooms slid shut, each group wishing to provide some illusion of privacy to the others, even though all would be able to _hear_ the proceedings through the thin shoji walls. 

            Sango immediately set to work on disrobing her beloved houshi-sama, her hands working through the black and violet robes he wore with expert ease after much practice.  With unwavering discipline, Miroku kept his hands still at his sides, only moving them to assist his sexy demon slayer in unwrapping him.  Once he was fully nude, his muscular, battle-hardened body bare except for Kazaana’s muzzle and his thick cock throbbing, _oozing_ for her to see, Sango pressed him downward and lay him back on their bedroom’s clean, white futon.  Releasing her silky brown hair from its ponytail, she began to strip out of her glossy black taijiya bodysuit, working her athletic figure out of the form-fitting sheath of a garment, and soon joined him in nudity.

            Shiori and Shippo almost tore their way through each other’s clothes, exchanging breathless kisses as they descended to their own futon together.  Within moments, the lovely bat-girl lay bare and completely willing beneath the lusting demon male.  When they’d met, he had been a mere kit and she had been an outright _wisp_ of a girl.  Now, years later, they had the minds and bodies of adults.  Shiori had filled out nicely in her hips and chest, each of her breasts a pleasing handful for Shippo.  Conversely, the fox sported a strong, toned, elegantly muscled male form, one that rippled with tremendous power for its light weight.  Above Shiori, he slipped out of his hakama and his cock sprang free to jut from him proudly, his bushy auburn tail twitching over his rear in anticipation.

            Shippo began to fist himself slowly, feeling his creamy male essence pushing up the central channel of his cock as Shiori took the contraceptive sutra Kagome had given her, peeled it away from its backing, and applied it to her flat stomach.  The caramel-skinned bat-girl was far beyond foreplay at this point, wanting nothing other than Shippo opening her and filling her body with his, pumping through her clenching inner muscles and giving her everything he had.  She spread her thighs wide, baring her throbbing female mound to her fox lover.  She then reached down between her thighs with both hands to peel the rich pink petals of her pussy far apart, exposing her glistening vaginal interior for him to see.

            InuYasha, Kagome, and Shizu had also shed their clothes, at this point.  Fire-Rat clothing, red-and-white miko garb, and the components of female peasant’s outfit lay discarded in one corner of their dimly lantern-lit bedroom.  Fully nude except for his enchanted necklace, the hanyou warrior stood above the bedroom’s futon with Kagome and Shizu, also fully nude, both on their knees before him, worshipping his big, heavy balls and even bigger cock with their hands and mouths.  Their hands wandered up and down his hot, incredibly powerful body, stroking his chest and abdomen while lingering with special attention over his hard male rear and his bulging muscular hips and thighs.  One of Kagome’s hands found its way into the coarse, white tail he kept hidden down one leg of his red hakama, and she stroked it _against_ the lay of the fur, all the way down to its root at the base of his spine to get him growling with passion.

            With his eyes blazing demonic red, InuYasha watched Kagome and Shizu take turns jacking and sucking on his meaty staff, each woman taking him into their throats all the way down to his lightly haired base with ease.  He ran his clawed hands through their soft, silky hair, stroking their heads in appreciation and guiding them at the same time.  They played their lips and tongues over every ridge and vein along his impressive, nine-inch length, hefting his balls and squeezing them playfully.  Soon, his balls were too tense for them to play with, each one pulsing and ready in their smooth, hairless sac.  InuYasha could feel a delicious, pulsating pressure building deep inside him, kissing against his most male tissues from within, and he could hear his own heartbeat thumping in his furry dog ears as the dagger-like magenta stripes of his demon heritage that had formed on his cheeks began to _glow_.

            Kagome could feel InuYasha’s heart hammering against her lips through his cock, taste his slippery pre-cum pouring out of him onto her tongue.  She licked away every rich droplet he shed, relishing in the salty, mineral taste.  She offered his cock to Shizu, who took it happily and sucked at the broad, pulsating crown of it, tasting his abundant male fluid for herself.  Together, they gazed up at him with playful female eyes, stroking and kissing him lovingly to hold him on the very crest of his pleasure.  “ _Mmm_ , Kagome-chan,” Shizu cooed happily to her miko friend.  “I think our puppy’s getting close.  He’s so big and hard, he looks like he’ll blow at any moment.”

            “I am,” InuYasha rasped.  His muscular hest heaved in and out with harsh, shallow breaths as his peak threatened him.  His pre-cum grew cloudy with sperm in these final moments, so much built up inside his balls that it escaped him unbidden.  “I’m so fucking close, you two.”

            “Then come for us,” Kagome demanded, pumping her fist along InuYasha’s big, beautiful hanyou cock.  To her, he felt like steel cloaked in hot, living silk and she could feel his telltale throbbing suddenly become the intense, jerking pulsations of male orgasm.  “Give it to us, InuYasha, you studly _fucker_.  All of it.  Give us your cum _now!_ ”

            In public, Kagome was as decorous and proper as any.  In private, behind closed doors when not a single scrap of clothing covered her and her pussy pulsed hot and wet between her thighs, she could be an outright _harlot._ When she demanded that InuYasha give up his seed, the pent-up hanyou could do nothing but acquiesce.  InuYasha tossed his ivory-maned head back and _snarled_ as orgasm took him.  Boiling hot hanyou cum pumped up from his balls and surged through his cock to burst out of it audibly in one rich, viscous jet after another.  On his first great, surging _splurt_ , Kagome pressed his cock back against his muscular abdomen to watch him blast himself in his chest, watching with rapt fascination as the glistening wads of his creamy white juice splattered and slipped down his bronzed flesh, shimmering in the lantern light.  She then lowered her gaze to see the crown of his cock flaring widely, as if seeking to lock against the walls of a woman’s pussy while the underside of his cock bloated outward and sank back in by the sheer amount and pressure of the reproductive matter moving just beneath.  Shizu pulled his spewing organ down into her mouth, playing a hand between her open thighs over her aching pussy flesh desperately as she gulped frantically at the rich male cream flooding out of him.

            InuYasha took himself in hand and began to pump himself to keep his pleasure going.  Swiftly, he moved his spewing cockhead from Shizu’s mouth to Kagome’s and his beautiful nymphomaniac of a miko swallowed everything he produced.  As his ejaculations ebbed from hard, bursting spurts to gently oozing pulses, Kagome ceased swallowing and let his semen build up in her mouth for him to see, swirling her pretty pink tongue around in his creamy white, sperm-loaded ooze before sealing her lips at last and downing everything in a single, audible _gulp_.

            At that moment, Miroku lay on his back atop his futon with a pile of pillows beneath his head as Sango straddled his hips, riding him with slow, deliberate strokes.  Bracing her hands on the futon under the crooks of his arms, she leaned over him and kept her feet planted flat on the futon to either side of his hips with thighs spread wide to give her hentai houshi a full view of the action, letting him see exactly how her body stretched and wept to accept him.  He watched his steely cock, sheathed in one of Kagome’s exotic, translucent purple condoms, gliding in and out of Sango’s pussy with a delicious, soaking wet _gush, gush, gush._   With her atop him, he could bear full witness to her excellent muscle tone at work as she fucked him, watching her slender, deceptively-strong arms and thighs flexing precisely and rhythmically, the flat, washboard-like pane of her stomach remaining tight all the while.  Her full breasts bounced gently on her chest with each stroke of her hips, heaving with each breath she took, and he began to play with them in earnest, squeezing and kneading them together, pinching playfully at her rosy nipples. 

            Miroku swore that being around InuYasha during breeding season, exposed to the inu hanyou’s pheromones and endless sexual energy optimized the blood flow in his body.  He felt that he swelled to a longer length and thicker girth than otherwise; it was during this time that when he and Sango joined their bodies, even with a condom dulling the sensation somewhat, he could feel the mouth of her womb throbbing against his cock’s head at the moment of his deepest reach.  In those hot, gloriously intimate moments, he silently cursed Naraku for interfering in their lives. Had the dark hanyou not existed, he would have stripped his condom away, planted his life-giving seed deep into that sacred place inside Sango’s belly and finally consummated the promise they’d made to each other so long ago: to build a family together.  He wanted so very badly to give her his children, to see her belly swell with new life again and again, but right then, he knew he’d have to settle for the admittedly awesome pleasure of being able to take her to bed and come inside her without conception.

            Shiori wrapped her arms, legs, and wings around Shippo to cradle him, cocoon him in the warmth of her body as his rhythm within her grew harsh, erratic.  She could feel him throbbing, pulsing inside her, hammering away at her internal dead end hard and fast.  When she pulled his head down to take his mouth in a sudden, heart-swelling kiss, he cried out into her lips as he erupted within her suddenly, fat wads of his seed leaping out of his cock to bathe the mouth of her womb with their rich, creamy liquid heat.  The pleasure swooned Shippo and he sank into Shiori’s arms to let her hold him.

            InuYasha’s oozing cock began to return to full erection before Kagome and Shizu’s eyes, having barely softened in the few minutes since his first orgasm.  He jacked himself back to maximum size and throbbing hardness for them to see, each stroke of his fist lubricated with his own seed.  Once he could feel the heat of his pre-cum pushing its way up and out of him again, he smeared his fingertips through the weeping slit at the end of his cock and raised them to his mouth, making a show of licking them clean.  “Who wants it first?” he asked, flashing a sexy, fanged grin at his ‘bitches.’

            “ _Shizu._   Do Shizu first,” Kagome answered without hesitation, prompting Shizu to immediately lay back on the bedroom’s futon and spread her legs wide for InuYasha, baring herself to him utterly.  The powerful hanyou male needed no further instruction to kneel between the open thighs of Shiori’s highly attractive mother and position himself atop her.  Beside them, Kagome applied a contraceptive sutra to Shizu’s lower stomach and watched with unmasked excitement as InuYasha pressed the broad head of his cock to the older woman’s dripping sex, rubbing it up and down to slip it through her delicate female petals.  Shizu threw her arms around InuYasha’s sinewed neck and she let her head sink into the pillow beneath it, giving up a happy moan as the well-endowed hanyou warrior entered her at last, filling her up in a single, well-lubricated stroke.

            “Oh, fuck, _yes! InuYasha!_ ” Shizu cried out, feeling InuYasha’s big cock pushing her pussy’s inner muscles far apart, reaching deep to press right up against her hungry womb.  InuYasha’s glowing red eyes slid closed; as good as it felt to have Kagome and Shizu suck and jack him off, _this_ was what he really needed, the sensation of a willing woman’s innermost flesh cloaked around him, her womb bare and thirsting against the crown of his cock.  He began a brisk, penetrating rhythm within Shizu right from the start, pulling almost all the way out so that he could see his cock bearing a thick, wet coat of her pussy’s cream and surging right back in.  The futon they lay upon was just wide enough for three people and so Kagome lay beside them, watching and listening as InuYasha took Shizu hard and fast, without mercy.  She paid special attention to the way the lean, male muscles in InuYasha’s arms and back, rear and thighs rippled and flexed with raw power beneath his tanned skin as he fucked Shiori’s mother.  She pleased herself with her hands to keep herself stimulated, using one to knead one of her ample breasts, using the other to fill her own weeping sex with her fingers.

            Coming back to himself, Shippo pushed himself up onto his arms to look down at Shiori.  “You didn’t come?” he asked.

            Shiori shook her head, smiling despite not having joined Shippo in his pleasure.  “I came close, but no.”

            “I think I have something for that,” Shippo smirked to his bat-girl lover.  Mindful of her delicate wings, he rolled them over so that he lay on his back and she straddled his hips.  He pulled her forward so that she lay flat atop him, her breasts pressing to his chest and her heart beating right next to his, and he gathered a mass of his kitsune magic into a palm.

            Shiori looked behind her and her magenta eyes widened as the mass of green fox fire leapt out of Shippo’s hand and floated in the air to begin to increase in size, changing shape and color until it formed itself into a perfect duplicate of Shippo.  A completely naked, highly aroused Shippo.  Shippo’s copy moved at the telepathic command of the original and knelt behind Shiori, leaning over the panting bat-girl to take her shapely caramel hips into his hands and nip and kiss at her neck from behind.

            The original Shippo filled his hands with Shiori’s sweet female hanyou ass and pulled its perfect cheeks apart so that his copy could see the clean, deep pink excretory orifice above her cock-filled pussy.  Shiori’s cheeks burned in one of the most furious blushes of her life.  “ _Shippo!_ ” she gasped, looking back at Shippo’s copy, then back down to the original.  “What…what are you…?”

            “Can you take both of us, Shiori-chan?” the original Shippo asked, grasping Shiori’s elegant female chin and kissing her sweetly.  “Do you want to feel both of us in you, moving against each other inside your body?”

            Shiori swallowed thickly and nodded.  To know that her mother was about to hear the sounds of her taking two males at once embarrassed her and _excited_ her to no end.  “Yes…yes, Shippo-kun!  Fill me, both of you!  _Please!_ ”

            “Here it comes,” InuYasha warned as he felt his cock swell and lift deep within Shizu’s cunt.  His balls were tense again and nowhere near empty as he buried them against her rear over and over.

            Beside them, Kagome shifted on the futon so that she press herself up to Shizu’s side and take her mouth in a hungry, girl-on-girl kiss for InuYasha to see.  She played her tongue against Shizu’s for a bit, their saliva still containing a good amount of InuYasha’s cum for each of them to taste.  “He’s going to come in you,” she whispered hotly to her female counterpart as she broke the kiss.  “He’s going to give you so much, he’ll fill you up.  Do you want that, Shizu-san?”

            “ _Yes,_ ” Shizu yowled, feeling as nothing more than a female animal in heat looking to be _bred_.  “Do it, InuYasha.  Please, come inside me!  Oh _God_ , fucking come inside me _now!_ ”

            InuYasha managed a few more lunging thrusts into Shizu’s cunt and gave up a strangled, guttural cry as he felt the pulsating pressure of his seed begin to move inside him again.  Heavy jets of it traveled through his cock and burst out to slam against Shizu’s gasping cervix, flooding through it into her womb as she craved.  Kagome was wise to give her a contraceptive sutra, for not even her _ovaries_ were safe from InuYasha’s cum.

            Orgasm took Shizu hard.  The instant her innermost female flesh could taste semen as hot, thick and powerful as InuYasha’s washing over it, her entire body went into overdrive, wave after wave of intense female pleasure wracking her from head to toe.  Viciously, she wrapped her arms and legs around InuYasha and held on tight so that he couldn’t pull out until he’d given her all he could.

            Sango moaned aloud as she felt Miroku come inside her.  The handsome monk groaned her name softly, reverently and bucked his hips up against hers a few times before he sheathed himself completely within her and held still.  His cock throbbed and spat big, healthy loads of his creamy seed into the condom he wore over and over, flooding its reservoir instantly, and the demon slayer could feel the heat of his cream radiating through the thin contraceptive barrier surrounding him to warm her deep inside.  Her womb and pussy muscles contracted around him with rhythmic, sucking pulses as she came with him, milking in vain for a taste of his reproductive essence.  Trembling, she eased herself up and off his cock, sliding and kissing her way down his hard male body to remove the cum-filled condom from him with such care that nothing escaped it.  She turned the condom upside down and sat up to examine its opaque liquid contents, observing how the lantern light failed to penetrate the stuff inside by its density.  She then ensured Miroku looked her directly in her eyes as she brought the condom’s slippery opening to her lips and sucked all of his rich, silky cum down her throat.

            Shippo’s copy eased the head of his cock up Shiori’s ass for both the bat-girl and the original Shippo to feel.  Shiori’s breath came as hard pants as she felt her tight, pristine female ‘backdoor’ and the canal beyond opening up to accommodate the thick length sliding into it.  Now she could feel _two_ powerful male hearts beating inside her.  Shippo, for his part, relished in the sensation of a perfect duplicate of his own cock pulsing alongside his own, separated only by a thin wall of Shiori’s most female tissues.  Once Shippo’s copy sank to his balls within Shiori’s ass, the head of him nudging at her colon, the duplicate males held still to let her adjust.

            Shiori quivered between the two Shippos, feeling so utterly full of cock that she imagined if the kitsune doubles came inside her at that moment, their seed would come running out of her _ears_.  She rocked her hips experimentally, feeling her males’ hard lengths shifting within her and igniting entirely new dimensions of pleasure for her.  “I’m ready,” she whispered to the real Shippo, kissing his forehead sweetly.  “Please, fuck me.  Fuck me _hard!_ ”

            Shizu smiled, blushing deeply at the sound of her daughter getting it good and hard in both ends by two Shippos at once and shivered, moaning as InuYasha pulled out of her.  His seed came running out of her hot and thick, drooling from her well-fucked cunt to pass between the taut globes of her bottom and soak into the futon beneath.  Before she could move, Kagome slipped atop her, straddling her waist having applied a sutra to her own belly. 

            The sexy miko from the future smiled down at Shiori’s mother, their full breasts and flat stomachs rubbing together, then kissed her softly as InuYasha rose to his knees to mount her from behind.  The lusty hanyou bracketed her thighs with his and pressed the head of his cum-drenched cock to her pussy’s quivering mouth.  Behind him, his white tail thrashed in anticipation of filling her up.  Shizu wrapped her arms around Kagome, holding her lovingly and enjoying the warmth of her body mated intimately to her own as InuYasha slid inside the younger woman’s hot, gripping sheath, claiming his second pussy of the night.  Inside Kagome, InuYasha began the same hard, pumping rhythm he’d used on Shizu and the miko’s cries of ecstasy soon filled the bedroom.

            Remaining on his back, Miroku urged Sango to turn away from him and back up until she practically sat on his face, her beautiful pussy drooling mere inches above his mouth as it and her inner thighs cloaked his face with their intimate heat.  The taijiya spread her knees further apart on the futon to either side of Miroku’s shoulders to lower her hips downward, gasping out as her hentai houshi opened her core with his fingers.  He lapped and sucked happily at her delicate, creamy pink interior and hooded clit, gulping down all the delicious female nectar her pussy produced.  In response, Sango eased her upper body downward, her breasts flattening against Miroku’s abdomen.  She closed one hand around his cock and cupped the other over his big balls to take his cock into her mouth, pumping her lips up and down its finely textured length in the rhythm she knew pleased him.

            With two big cocks pumping inside her relentlessly, Shiori shattered into climax for ‘Shippo Prime’ to feel.  He smirked devilishly as she arched and writhed between himself and his copy with wild abandon, and the rich, milking throb of her inner muscles sucking at their pulsing lengths pulled them over the edge with her.  They groaned in shared triumph as hot, creamy seed burst out of them to reach deep into her pussy and ass at once, flooding her womb and drenching her colon, drowning her insides with searing liquid heat to prolong her pleasure for minutes on end.

            InuYasha’s ears pinned back as began to move within Kagome faster, harder.  The wet _gushes_ of his cock sinking into her cunt and retreating, over and over, came closer and closer together as he sped up.  His fingertips dug into her hips, his claws threatening to puncture her skin as his grip tightened.  “Almost there,” he grit out.  All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart, the roaring pulse of his blood speeding up to a delicious crescendo as he neared his third peak of the night.

            Below InuYasha, Kagome couldn’t summon the breath to form a reply.  She had a wonderfully thick length of hot, hard, throbbing hanyou cock pistoning in and out of her sopping core from behind.  On every stroke, she could feel its bloated crown gliding over the secret, swollen ‘sweet spot’ that lay along her vagina’s anterior wall before sliding deep to bump firmly against her cervix, knocking on the very gate to her womb.  She could feel every palpitating vein along his meaty length sawing past her vaginal walls.  Beyond that, she had Shizu feeling her up, fondling her breasts, nipping and kissing at her shoulder, neck, and mouth from below.  The sensations bombarding her deprived her of the ability to speak and all she could was _scream_ as orgasm rocked her.

            InuYasha felt his youki surging in his demonic blood as his beautiful, incomparable Kagome came for him, creaming around him.  His balls grew suddenly motionless in their tight sac and his cock swelled to a new, frightening volume within her as her molten internal contractions sucked him off.  “Ungh _…_ ungh _,_ ungh _, ungh!  Kagome!_ ” he cried out savagely as he snapped his hips forward, shoving his full length to the root in her hot, sucking cunt and keeping himself there. 

            The underside of InuYasha’s cock bulged outward visibly and sank back in quickly and rhythmically, over and over as he began to come inside Kagome.  His cock was as a long, phallic heart, pumping its precious fluid to where it needed to be.  He erupted potently, thick white bursts of sperm-loaded hanyou cum gushing from the head of his cock and flooding into Kagome’s hungry womb with hard jolts of incredible ejaculatory pressure, filling both her womb and her convulsing pussy to overflowing in a matter of frantic male heartbeats.

            InuYasha’s cum plastered the walls of Kagome’s pussy and womb and immediately, she could feel the demonic energy laced in it osmosing through those healthy pink internal tissues of hers to enter her blood, driven by her racing heart to circulate throughout her body and ignite the ultimate firestorm of female pleasure within her.  She swore that she could feel his cream seeping into her fallopian tubes, seeking her very _ovaries_ and demanding that she give up an egg or _twelve_.  Orgasm wracked her again and again, each dizzying peak coming sooner and sooner after the last until they ceased to exist separately, forming one long, continuous high that had her body quaking and mind shuddering on the verge of complete insanity until she all but collapsed into Shizu’s arms. 

            Still twitching and oozing within Kagome, InuYasha closed his eyes and tilted his head back to turn his pleasure-stricken face to the bedroom ceiling, shivering as palpable relief from his heat came flooding over him at last, only after three messy orgasms of his own.  He leaned over Kagome to cover her bare back with his broad chest, effectively sandwiching her between himself and Shizu.  As Shiori’s mother held her and whispered sexy, post-coital nonsense into one of her ears from below, he nuzzled at the curve of her shoulder, rocking against her to soothe her with gentle licks and kisses.

            Miroku came hard into Sango’s mouth while she did the same to his.  His seed pulsed up and out of his balls, pumped up his cock, then blasted out over her tongue and down her throat in hot, heavy spurts.  At the same time, her pussy expelled her own milky cream from an elegant, uniquely female orifice tucked just beneath her clit for him to swallow as well.  They drank from each other, fucking each other’s faces and coming, _cumming_ in each other’s mouths for long, devastatingly pleasurable moments.  When they separated, glistening threads of their respective fluids linked her lips to his cock, his lips to her cunt.  Sango turned around, lay down next to Miroku to press herself up alongside him and drape a thigh over him, then took his mouth in a deep kiss to allow them to taste their fluids mingling between their tongues.

            Shiori lay her head on Shippo’s shoulder while his copy withdrew from her rear, the viscous thread of semen that linked his cock to her freshly-fucked ass stretching out and finally breaking.  That second Shippo then dissolved into the nothingness from which the first had made him.  Using his transformation magic, the remaining kitsune male willed his tail to change length and breadth until it spanned an area of many square feet, curling it over the bat-girl and himself to use it as a blanket.  After just a few minutes of rest, he could feel her heart calming, her breathing evening out as she fell asleep atop him.  He smiled, proud to be able to bring her such pleasure, then kissed one of her temples as he allowed sleep to take him as well.

            InuYasha pulled out of Kagome, his still-massive cockhead separating from her quivering hole with a wet, smacking _pop_.  Large globs of his seed bled out of her after him, dripping from her pussy onto Shizu’s belly.  He felt mostly sated but he hardly had to force himself to perform the next phase of his tryst with his women: the _cleanup_.  The hanyou warrior lifted Kagome off of Shizu and lay her down so that the two women lay side by side, each one satisfied and totally pliant for him.  He spread the older woman’s thighs apart first and lowered his ivory-maned head between them to open her flushed pussy with his fingers, mindful of his claws, then sealed his mouth to the healthy pink riches within.

            Shizu whimpered from the stimulation as InuYasha began to _suck_ , drawing his own semen out from deep within her and swallowing greedily.  Once she was empty, he began to lap deliberately at not only the petals of her pussy, but the clean, pink hole of her ass, as well, cleaning _everything_ he could reach, all of her accessible flesh that bore a trace of him regardless of purpose.  The enzymes unique to his half-demon saliva worked as a healing agent; even after such a vigorous encounter, she wouldn’t be sore in the morning because of them.  InuYasha continued his oral service on Shizu long after she was clean of his seed and her whimpers soon became soft, breathless cries of female climax as she came right in his face, lifting her hips to thrust her twitching, orgasming pussy up into his mouth.

            Once he finished with Shiori’s mother, InuYasha switched to Kagome, performing the same worshipful service upon the most intimate area of her body to cleanse her of his seed, as well.  Halfway asleep, Kagome worked a hand down between her thighs to run it through her hanyou’s thick, white hair.  She rubbed his head and caressed his furry dog ears in appreciation, giggling with each suck of his lips, each lapping pass of his long, wonderfully-textured tongue.  Like Shizu, she didn’t giggle for long, her giggles quickly becoming a keening cry of pleasure as InuYasha brought her to orgasm again. 

            His eyes reverting to their normal white-and-gold and his chin dripping with female fluid, InuYasha rose from between Kagome’s thighs and sat on his knees above her and Shizu, taking a few moments to luxuriate in the sight of the two beautiful, naked women resting before him, their bodies throbbing with pleasure he had given them.  Even then, their wombs feast on his seed, thwarted from conception only by the sutras they wore.  InuYasha then slipped himself in between her and Shizu on the futon, pulling a bedsheet up and over their hot, yet cooling bodies so that they could press themselves to his sides and drift off to sleep with him.

            As the condom Miroku wore prevented Sango’s impregnation by him, the sutras that Kagome, Shizu, and Shiori wore worked as intended and neutralized the untold billions of otherwise incredibly powerful half or full demon sperm they carried in their bellies.  Sexually satisfied for the moment, each member of the pack dozed for an hour or so, then rose from their beds at around the same time to gather at the inn’s indoor hot spring for a much needed bath.

**(Soundtrack: Edguy – Paradise)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO3aIOWXpR4** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO3aIOWXpR4)

            The inn’s bath was an indoor square of wooden ledges built around an _onsen,_ a natural, geothermally heated hot spring, large enough to accommodate the entire pack at once.  All were completely naked and not the least bit uncomfortable around each other.  After all, they had all just finished fucking each other’s brains out for each other to hear, if not see.  They were pack and so they ogled each other freely without fear of incurring each other’s anger or jealousy.

            In one of the bath’s four, lantern-lit corners, InuYasha crouched in the pleasingly hot water, crooning happily as Kagome crouched behind him, working some hair care product from her time into his silvery mane.  When Kagome met InuYasha, he had been hanging from Goshinboku by one of Kikyo’s purifying arrows for fifty years, unable to do anything to include bathe or wash his hair.  Even before Kikyo had sealed him, he couldn’t take especially good care of his hair due to the state of chemical technology of his era.  Now that he and Kagome weren’t the least bit embarrassed about seeing each other naked, the miko took advantage of moments like these to help groom her inu hanyou love.  She’d all but cured him of split ends and when dry, his mane shone like silver in the sunlight.

            Miroku and Sango bathed together in another corner of the bath, working soapy sponges over their wet bodies while Shippo, Shiori and Shizu did the same in still another.  Even when bathing, Miroku could not remove the gauntlet that kept Kazaana sealed, though he could submerge it safely.  Shiori faced away from Shippo and Shizu and spread her bat-wings to their full, ten-foot span so that her kitsune lover could use a soft, wet cloth to wash the delicate surfaces of one while her mother did the same to the other.

            Once everyone had washed up, all reclined against the edge of the bath in their respective pairings to relax in the steamy water and reflect on the past day.  Shizu joined Kagome beside InuYasha and the pack sat in comfortable silence for a minute or two, until InuYasha spoke.

            “So, it’s been two weeks since we’ve last seen Naraku,” InuYasha stated matter-of-factly to his pack.  Even as he spoke of a less-than-pleasant matter, he relished in the sensation of two beautiful naked women snuggling up to him.  “We’ve been all over looking for him.  Where do you think he could be?”

            “He could be _anywhere_ ,” Sango answered, nuzzling into Miroku’s bare shoulder absent-mindedly while she gazed distantly into the gently swirling bath water.  She thought not really of Naraku, but of Kohaku, her younger brother whose death a wicked ploy of Naraku’s had caused years ago.  Since then, Kohaku’s life had been sustained by a shard of the Shikon jewel; if Naraku wanted to complete the jewel, he would have to remove the shard Kohaku carried, killing him.  Kohaku himself had been as difficult to find as Naraku.  To the best of Sango’s knowledge, he had been travelling with Kikyo, the deceased miko’s body and spirit reconstructed and animated by the dark magic of the forest witch Urasue.  Together, Kohaku and Kikyo seemed able to keep a low profile.

            “Anywhere indeed,” Miroku agreed, holding Sango close to him.  “Japan isn’t the only mass of land in the world.  If the maps from your time are accurate, Kagome-sama, then there are entire other continents Naraku could be lurking on.”

            “But Naraku’s goal is to make the Sacred Jewel whole again, isn’t it?” Shiori asked.  “Lady Kagome still has two or three shards of it and the wolf prince Koga up north has two of his own.  If all the shards Naraku needs are here in Japan, then there’s no reason for him to leave.”

            “He’s probably a lot closer to us than we think, waiting for the right moment to strike,” Shizu added grimly, gripping at InuYasha’s muscular arm reflexively.

            “Maybe,” InuYasha pondered aloud.  All the while, he continued to scan his surroundings with his elevated hanyou senses and the spiritual sense that Kagome had taught him.  Either Naraku was nowhere near or he had suddenly become incredibly good at concealing every single possible indicator of his presence at once, maybe both.  “But why wait so long?  He’s never left us alone for this long, before.”

            “I bet he’s scared,” Shippo declared proudly, though halfway expecting one of Naraku’s monstrous ‘puppets’ to come smashing through the nearest wall at that very moment to spite him.  Nothing happened.  He was proud of his own power and the power of the pack he was member to.  “You’ve got Tetsuseiga, InuYasha.  With it, you can use Meido Zangetsuha at any time.  And now Sesshomaru has the Bakusaiga.  Naraku can’t challenge you two together.  He can barely challenge either of you alone anymore, either.”

            InuYasha grew thoughtful.  He and his pack had been hunting Naraku in occasionally lousy conditions for two weeks; it had been even longer since Kagome had last been home, to rest, recuperate, and see her family.  If Kagome was getting homesick herself, she was putting on a good show of hiding it.  “I think we should go back to Edo, for a bit,” he proposed.

            Kagome sat up straight in the water and looked down at InuYasha directly.  “Edo?”

            “Yeah,” InuYasha confirmed to his lovely miko, running a hand up and down her bare, wet back.  “We should go back to Edo so you can go back to your time for a while.  Your family’s probably worried about you, not that you’ve never been away from them for this long before.”

            Kagome smiled happily; she loved InuYasha with all her heart and over time, he had become vastly more thoughtful of those around him.  She nodded in agreement with him; she missed her mother, brother, and grandfather greatly but she knew that her yearning to return home was symptomatic of her overall situation.  With her crazy adventures in the Sengoku Jidai and her overarching mission to destroy Naraku, she had barely made it through her various high school exams.  She decided not to enroll in college, knowing that if she did enroll she would be spending, _wasting_ a great deal of likely her mother’s or grandfather’s money on an effort she wouldn’t be fully committed to.  Without any exams or studying to get in the way, since graduating from high school Kagome spent most of her time in the Feudal Era and found herself amazed at how fast the time went by.  Two or three weeks of searching for Naraku was nothing; she’d been travelling, fighting alongside her friends for _years_.

            After their bath and some food, the pack retired to their rooms for the night.  Miroku bedded with Sango, Shippo with Shiori, and as before, InuYasha with Kagome and Shizu.  Everyone slept soundly but InuYasha’s sleep, however, ended shortly after midnight.

            The hanyou pack leader’s furry dog ears twitched as a nearby sound roused them.  Though he slept soundly, he also slept lightly, a trait hammered into him by growing up as a half-demon orphan alone in strange forests.  Then, he had lived in constant fear of being killed and eaten at night by more powerful, full-blooded demons.  InuYasha opened his eyes and turned his head upon his pillow to see Tetsuseiga shaking gently in its sheath as it lay next to the futon he shared with Kagome and Shizu. 

            Sesshomaru was calling.

**-To be continued-**


	3. Make Love, Not War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sesshomaru calls InuYasha away from his friends briefly, for the purpose of making a sort of peace with him by involving him in a lewd midnight three-way with himself and a now-grown Rin.  InuYasha is willing, but declines to indulge, citing the need to get his pack’s permission, Kagome’s most of all.

 

            After their bath and some food, InuYasha and pack retired to their Kotobukiya inn rooms for the night.  Miroku bedded with Sango, Shippo with Shiori, and as before, InuYasha with Kagome and Shizu.  Everyone slept soundly but InuYasha’s sleep, however, ended shortly after midnight.

            The hanyou pack leader’s furry dog ears twitched as a nearby sound roused them.  Though he slept soundly, he also slept lightly, a trait hammered into him by growing up as a half-demon orphan wandering alone in strange forests.  Then, he had lived in constant fear of being killed and eaten at night by more powerful, full-blooded demons.  InuYasha opened his eyes and turned his head upon his pillow to see Tetsuseiga shaking gently in its sheath as it lay next to the futon he shared with Kagome and Shizu.  Sesshomaru was calling.

            Carefully, InuYasha extricated himself from between Kagome and Shizu without waking them, then pulled on his clothes and fastened Tetsuseiga to his waist.  Kagome’s yellow backpack lay on the floor nearby; he opened it retrieve a small, rectangular package of brown paper tied with string, a gift from Kagome to Sesshomaru to be given when they next crossed paths.  Leaving the bedroom and then the inn, InuYasha found the surrounding village dark, lit only by the light of the waning moon, its residents sleeping well by not having to dread another mantis attack.  He sniffed the cool night air and found Sesshomaru’s scent immediately.  The scent of a female’s pleasure, and a _human_ female’s at that, came intertwined with it.  He smiled knowingly; for all their differences, he and Sesshomaru certainly enjoyed some of the same things.

            InuYasha leapt out of the village by his superhuman hanyou agility, enjoying the sensation of the night air flowing through his clean, freshly-washed mane as he sailed skyward.  Sesshomaru’s scent led him to a shallow hill with a few trees that overlooked Kotobukiya.  There, he found his elder brother standing out in the open, waiting for him.

            Sesshomaru looked a great deal like InuYasha, though at nearly seven feet in height, he stood significantly taller.  He was heavier with muscle, yet fairer in skin tone and in the texture of his hair.  Like InuYasha, he had rich golden eyes and a long, flowing silvery mane, but his mane was naturally finer, appearing as a river of liquid mercury in the moonlight.  Another mass of hair, a plume of cream-colored fur formed as almost as a tail, protruded from his right shoulder through a hole in his upper robe and flowed down his broad back.  His mode of dress indicated a degree of nobility, clean, white silk robes with intricate hexagonal patterns not dyed in, but sewn in with blood-red silk.  Over his robes he wore an armor cuirass made of an alloy not of human origin, a single polished and spiked pauldron attached to it over his left shoulder.  He carried his swords, Tenseiga and Bakusaiga, underneath the golden sash around his waist at his left hip.

            InuYasha landed on the hill at a respectable distance from Sesshomaru.  Though the daiyoukai was his half-brother and they were working together against Naraku, all the times they’d fought remained fresh in InuYasha’s mind, so he decided not to approach too closely too soon.  Accompanying Sesshomaru was his own ‘pack,’ made up of Jaken, his diminutive, green-skinned toad demon vassal, Ah-Un, a two-headed, brown-scaled dragon demon that served as his beast of burden, and Rin, a human woman whom he had used Tenseiga to revive after she had been mauled to death by demon wolves as a child.

            The years had transformed Rin from an effervescent little girl into a beautiful and still slightly effervescent young woman.  With long, dark brown hair, dark green eyes, and creamy white skin, she had become a vision of natural human beauty and that, combined with a purity of heart that rivalled even Kagome’s, had ensnared Sesshomaru’s heart to her.  The scent of a human female’s pleasure that InuYasha detected when he picked up Sesshomaru’s scent belonged to her.  To the inu hanyou, Sesshomaru appeared to dote on her to some extent, judging by the fine silk of her white-and-orange kimono.  As Rin grew up, she outgrew her clothes and so replacements had to come from somewhere, a high-quality somewhere, it would seem.

            InuYasha stepped forward respectfully, keeping his hands off of Tetsuseiga so as not to pose a threat.  “Sesshomaru.  Hello,” he greeted to his brother.  He nodded to Rin and the others.  “Rin.  Jaken.  Ah-Un.”  Rin blushed and smiled, bowing courteously while Jaken gave a respectful, if begrudging bow of his own.  Ah-Un gave a dragon-like snort of acknowledgement.  InuYasha’s attention lingered over Rin briefly.  To him, she seemed restless, even fidgety for some reason.

            “I almost had to intervene today,” Sesshomaru stated coolly to InuYasha, taking the hanyou warrior aback a bit.  His voice was rich with Japanese baritone and smooth as silk, disturbingly sexy even to InuYasha.  “Those mantis demons gave you much more trouble than they should have.”

            InuYasha looked away from Sesshomaru to glance over the village that lay sprawled below them.  “Yeah,” he agreed with some consternation.  “The people here didn’t tell us a whole lot about them before we started fighting.  I might have used a Meido to be done with them all, but they were too close to the village for me to do it safely.”

            “I take it you found no connection to Naraku with them?” Sesshomaru asked.

            InuYasha shook his head in dismay.  “None.  No jewel shard or anything.  They were just…regular giant crazy demon insects, I guess.  And it’s not just that, either.  Have a look at _this_.”

            InuYasha reached into his red haori and produced a folded up map of Japan’s main island of Honshu.  Kagome had printed it using a computer and printer in her own time and laminated it with flexible transparent plastic so that markers could be used on it without altering the map underneath.  The hanyou warrior unfolded the map and showed it to Sesshomaru.

            “We’re _here_ ,” InuYasha said to Sesshomaru, using a claw to point at a red mark on the map.  The mark was Kotobukiya’s location, 200 miles north of Edo.  “And here are all of the places we’ve been, so far.”

            Over a dozen more red marks on the map formed a path that began in Edo and wove up, down, and around Honshu, a search pattern.  Sesshomaru had followed them the entire way and so he knew where they had been, how long they’d been searching for Naraku, but to see the search described in visual terms was nonetheless striking to the demon lord.

            “We’ve been to all of these places and not one has given us a lead,” InuYasha explained.

            One of Sesshomaru’s thin, elegant male eyebrows arched as he studied InuYasha’s map, enthralled by its resolution.  He had never seen one like it before.  “This map is very finely detailed,” the daiyoukai noted.  “Colored, as well.  Where did you get it?”

            “It’s Kagome’s,” InuYasha answered.  “She brought it from her time.”

            “ _Her_ time?”

            “The future,” InuYasha clarified to Sesshomaru’s intrigue.  “Hundreds of years from now, I think.  Kagome says that in her time, there are these machines that fly around the world and draw pictures of the land from above, so high above that they can see the whole world at once.  That’s how this map was made.”

            Sesshomaru’s golden eyes narrowed and his mouth fell ever so slightly agape.  Pictures of the entire world?  _Time travel?_   Pondering, he looked up to the starlit night sky above and imagined the distances and forces that would be involved in the operation of one of the machines InuYasha described.  “Fascinating,” he said.

            InuYasha folded up his map and stored it back in his haori.  “Have you found anything, yourself?”

            “No.  No scent of Naraku’s miasma, no trace of his aura.  No sign of his incarnation, Byakuya,” Sesshomaru replied.  “It feels almost as if Naraku hides from us.  What will you do now?”

            “The others and I are going back to Edo, in the morning,” InuYasha said.  “We’ve been out here for weeks, now and we need a break, Kagome most of all.  What about you?”

            Sesshomaru looked to Rin, Jaken, and Ah-Un.  Jaken and Ah-Un were youkai, like himself.  Their needs for food and shelter were not like those of a human.  But Rin was human; though Sesshomaru made sure that her needs for food and shelter were met, he knew that she would enjoy visiting a human settlement, mingling among her own kind again and making use of whatever amenities available there.  And then, there was _another_ matter, one he would soon broach to InuYasha.  He looked back to his brother.  “We will follow,” he said.

            “Really?  To Edo?” InuYasha asked, surprised.  “Kagome and I have a house there.  Miroku and Sango have another.  I think we’d have room if you…you know, wanted to stay with us.”

            “Hn.  Most gracious,” Sesshomaru said.  “There is…something I would ask of you, as well.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yes,” Sesshomaru confirmed, then turned his head to Jaken and Ah-Un.  “Jaken, Ah-Un.  Leave us, briefly.”

            Jaken startled and Ah-Un cocked both of its heads at the daiyoukai’s request.  To their surprise, Sesshomaru was actually going through with ‘it.’  Composing himself, Jaken bowed to his master.  “Y-yes!  Yes, of course, Lord Sesshomaru!” he complied with his scratchy squawk of a voice.  He took hold of Ah-Un’s reins and began to lead the dragon demon downhill.  “Come along, Ah-Un.”

**(Soundtrack: Uriah Heep – The Wizard)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPZfFEW2G9A** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPZfFEW2G9A)

              Once she, Sesshomaru and InuYasha were alone, Rin stepped up to Sesshomaru’s side, circling her arms around one of her daiyoukai lover’s larger, much more powerful ones.  In the dim moonlight, InuYasha could still see the young woman’s green eyes twinkling with…something.  Eyebrows raising, he watched her hike a thigh up Sesshomaru’s front in a most provocative manner as she began to almost imperceptibly gyrate her hips against the daiyoukai’s solid form.  The wind changed direction and brought her scent to his nose, working a powerful effect on him instantly.  _Holy shit._ InuYasha drew in a gasp of a breath and his pulse sped up; Rin was _aroused_ , so aroused that to him, she smelled to be creaming wet underneath her kimono already.  His golden eyes widened; who was she aroused for?  Sesshomaru?  _Himself?_

            Sesshomaru commanded _Mokomoko_ , the term he used to refer to his tail-like shoulder fur, to extend in length.  It shot out from him to wrap around InuYasha’s waist and yank him off his feet, drawing him in to himself and Rin.  The hanyou warrior gave up a cry of surprise and the towering inu youkai snaked his left arm, the one his brother had once used Tetsuseiga to cut off, around InuYasha to pull him close.  Rin watched with an excited, most un-ladylike grin growing on her face as Sesshomaru bent his head to press his nose into InuYasha’s ivory haired head and breathe in his scent.

            “You smell good, for a _hanyou_ ,” Sesshomaru complimented to InuYasha, using the term that described half demons only in humor.  He spoke hot and sultry directly into one of InuYasha’s dog ears.  “You’ve bathed, and even better, you’ve encountered a woman tonight.  _Two_ women, the priestess and the bat-girl’s mother.  You gave them your seed.”  InuYasha stood completely still and rigid in Sesshomaru’s hold, his chest heaving and heart pounding inside it with uncertainty as the big, extremely powerful daiyoukai began to nuzzle his way down the side of his head to his neck.  He gasped aloud as Sesshomaru pressed his lips to bare flesh, beginning to lick, beginning to _suck,_ the youki-fueled sensation electric and vastly more pleasurable to InuYasha than the hanyou warrior knew it should be.

            Sesshomaru slipped his other arm around Rin’s slender figure and urged her to InuYasha’s side.  Eagerly, the human woman pressed her herself firmly to the hanyou’s strong, warm male body. She raised herself onto the tips of her toes to take his handsome face into her hands, turn it to her away from Sesshomaru, and kiss him.  InuYasha cried out into her mouth, his mind overwhelmed with sensation as both Rin and goddamn _Sesshomaru_ ravished him at once.

 _Ba-bump_.  InuYasha’s youki reacted to the stimulation readily, more readily than Sesshomaru expected, flowing off of him in a powerful pulse for both himself and Rin to feel.  Sesshomaru’s youki responded with a pulse of its own, stronger and more intense by his full demon blood.  The two auras of dog demon sexual energy caught Rin right in the middle and the human woman separated her mouth from InuYasha’s to cry out softly into the night as the heat of pleasure blossomed potently between her thighs.  By the males’ scent, the warmth of their bodies so near and their extreme power, she felt as if she were bathing, _drowning_ in two hot seas of pure, creamy white semen as they crashed against one another with her squarely in between.

            Sesshomaru wore a hard, cold armor cuirass but InuYasha did not, and so Rin thrust her hips hard against the inu hanyou’s, their increasingly hot bodies separated only by cloth.  She humped on him blatantly as her pleasure built higher and higher.  She reached down to take one of his hands and plant it over the lovely swell of her young female rear.  “Feel Rin, InuYasha-sama,” she gasped, urging InuYasha to touch, to feel, to _squeeze_.  “Feel Rin!  Feel Rin…ah, _oh!_ _Feel Rin come!”_

            With very little provocation, Rin came hard right there between the two half-brothers, keening into the night.  She rubbed her thighs together as orgasmic pleasure washed over her, triggered by just the brothers’ auras and a little physical contact.  Her womb and pussy throbbed within her as one, perfect organ while her milky female cream slipped down her thighs beneath her kimono for the inu males to smell, if not see immediately.  She knew that the stuff would reach her bare ankles soon enough.

            Panting hard and magenta stripes forming on his cheeks again, InuYasha pushed a hand against Sesshomaru’s broad chest to get some space for himself.  His cock felt like a length of steel in his hakama, throbbing at full mast.  The scent of Rin’s juice hung heavy in the air around him, as intoxicating as Kagome’s or Shizu’s.  The young woman just _blew_ right there between himself and Sesshomaru for him to see and to _smell_.  “Rin…Sesshomaru,” InuYasha began, catching his breath.  “What’s going on?  What’s this about?”

            “This is about Rin,” Sesshomaru answered, pulling Rin close and tipping her chin upward to look into her half-lidded eyes, see the pleasured expression on her flushed face.  “We lay together often and I leave her satisfied every time, but her tastes and her appetite are…changing.  She now wishes to have _two_ males at once.  Myself…and _you_.”

            “Rin, you want Sesshomaru and _me_?  At the same time?” InuYasha hushed.

            Rin nodded, still breathing deep and husky from youki-induced orgasm.  “ _Hai_ ,” she whispered to InuYasha, undulating against Sesshomaru to keep her pleasure going.  Even then, the brothers’ sexual auras swept over her, keeping her hot and ready for more.  “Rin wants Sesshomaru-sama and Rin wants InuYasha-sama…deep inside.”

            InuYasha stepped back up to Sesshomaru and Rin.  He grasped Rin’s lovely chin with a hand and held her face up to him, licking his lips at the taste of her mouth that remained there.  “You’re a nice girl, Rin.  Smart, and fucking beautiful, too.  I’m flattered that you want me like this,” he praised with utmost honesty, causing Rin to blush even more hotly.  “But _you,_ Sesshomaru.  What are _you_ doing kissing on _me?_ ”

            Sesshomaru reached up to weave a hand into InuYasha’s ivory mane, playing with those heavy, healthy locks of silver.  InuYasha shivered at the sensation, not out of revulsion and did not pull away.  “To provide Rin with her desire, you and I would have to be very close to one another.  Without clothes,” he spoke softly, even dreamily as he played with InuYasha’s hair.  “I was experimenting to see what having you near me, against me other than in battle would feel like.  You are clean and healthy.  I am…not entirely repulsed.  Are _you?_ ”

            InuYasha blinked up at Sesshomaru, considering the thought.  “Actually, no,” he replied quickly.  He reached out with a clawed hand to grasp the upper rolled edge of Sesshomaru’s armor and yank back and forth slightly.  Sesshomaru’s body was big and heavy; InuYasha began to imagine the sheer muscle beneath all that steel and fine white silk and only excitement resulted.  After all, he’d caught himself halfway fawning over Miroku nicely-sculpted rear from time to time.  But unpleasant memories of all the times that he and Sesshomaru had fought, sometimes with the intent to kill one another, came flooding back to him.  “But, I thought…I thought you hated me.  What was I to you, a ‘filthy’ half-breed?  A ‘blight’ on our bloodline?”

            Sesshomaru’s face remained impassive and he looked away from InuYasha to the darkened countryside, as if to escape the accusation in his brother’s eyes.  “I did hate you,” he admitted quietly, holding InuYasha to him a little tighter.  “But I was _foolish_.  I envied you for Tetsuseiga when Father left it to you instead of me.  Now, I have Bakusaiga, a sword of my own.  I looked down on you for your human blood, but now Rin and I are together, and the children we will have someday will have human blood in them, as well.  You are Father’s son and I was so stupid to disregard his acknowledgement of you.  So _stupid._ The reasons I had to hate you, such as they were, have ceased to exist, and now…I wish to atone for the way I’ve behaved toward you.”

            InuYasha swallowed thickly.  He’d never known Sesshomaru to lie to him.  Try to kill him, sure, but never _lie_.  He began to smile lecherously, his upper incisors gleaming in the soft moonlight.  “So this ‘atonement’ of yours…it begins with a three-way between us and your wife?”

            “Other than working with you against Naraku, Rin’s love is the most valuable thing I have to offer you, yes.”

            InuYasha looked down to Rin and brushed a few strands of her dark brown hair away from her eyes.  “Rin, you naughty little bird.  You want to fuck us?  You want to take pleasure for yourself but at the same time, heal this rift between me and Sesshomaru with your body?”  Rin shivered in desire, nodding again and InuYasha smirked devilishly to her.  “That sounds like _fun_ ,” the hanyou growled playfully. 

            “So, you agree?” Sesshomaru asked.

            “Fuck, yes,” InuYasha answered readily.  “But…I need to talk about this with Kagome and the others first.  My pack and I are very…uh, _open_ with each other, but this is a little different.  I need their permission, but it’s late, so I’ll talk to them in the morning.”

            An expression of almost crestfallen disappointment crossed Rin’s face briefly as she realized that she wouldn’t be getting nailed by Sesshomaru and InuYasha that night.  She would have to wait a little longer for her fantasy to become reality.  InuYasha moved to console her, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her hips squarely to his so that even through their clothes, she could feel the size and heat of his erection against her belly.

            InuYasha gave Rin another deep, satisfying kiss and pumped against her languidly, drinking a soft moan of pleasure from her lips.  He broke the kiss and whispered hotly to her.           “Don’t worry.  Kagome and the others won’t say no to _you_ ,” he reassured to the highly-aroused young woman.  “The only condition that they might put on this is that they get to _watch_.”  

            Rin’s green eyes lit up with excitement at the idea of looking into Kagome’s beautiful blue eyes, caught in the throes of unimaginable ecstasy as InuYasha and her own, beloved Sesshomaru erupted inside her.  Sesshomaru looked down to Rin to gauge her reaction; she clearly did not disapprove.  “Very well,” he said to InuYasha.  “Get your answer soon.”

            InuYasha nodded, then reached into his haori to retrieve the package he had withdrawn from Kagome’s bag.  He handed it to Rin and the human woman took it happily, unwrapping it so that she and Sesshomaru could see its contents.  It contained a thick stack of Kagome and Miroku’s contraceptive sutras, to replace any Sesshomaru and Rin had used.  Rin beamed up at her daiyoukai mate, dreaming of all the sex they could have because of them.  Sesshomaru’s golden eyes shone in appreciation for the sutras’ power, clearly imagining the same thing as Rin.  Rin stored the pack of sutras in her own kimono and gave InuYasha a kiss on one of his cheeks in gratitude.

            InuYasha smiled, then separated from Rin and Sesshomaru, leaving their warmth reluctantly and turned to leap away from them, bounding down the hill to return to his friends in the village below.  Sesshomaru and Rin collected Jaken and Ah-Un from down the hill and departed Kotobukiya for their own night’s lodging and very likely, some amorous activity of their own.  In little time, InuYasha returned to Kagome and Shizu in the inn bedroom and slipped out of his clothes to lay himself quietly between them on their futon.

            Kagome stirred as InuYasha lay beside her.  She opened her eyes and turned her head to look up at her hanyou love. “Mmm…where did you go?” she asked sleepily.

            “Had a talk with Sesshomaru,” InuYasha said, adjusting the futon’s sheet over himself, Kagome, and Shizu.

            Kagome blinked away the sleep from her eyes, waking up more at the mention of Sesshomaru’s name.  “Oh?  What did he want?”

            InuYasha’s golden eyes seemed to glow and his lips curled into a helpless smile.  “Uh, he wanted to talk about some stuff,” he replied coyly.  “I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

            Kagome focused her eyes to look at InuYasha more clearly.  Even in the darkness, she could see the furtive expression on his face, but she decided not to press the issue further.  “Okay,” she agreed.

            InuYasha smiled to his miko love and eased closer to her to kiss her on her forehead.  He invited her to snuggle up to him and as she pressed herself up to him, laying her head on one of his thick, warm biceps, Shizu rolled over and did the same, seemingly asleep.  Basking in the warmth and scent of the two beauties in bed with him, InuYasha soon drifted off to sleep himself.

 

**-To be continued-**


	4. Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naraku dispatches his lone remaining incarnation Byakuya to capture the Shinto priestess Sayaka at her shrine along Japan's northeast coast, for the purpose of using her to heal him of an illness caused by his long use of the Shikon no Tama.  Arriving at the shrine, Byakuya observes Sayaka and other priestesses perform a highly sexual 'ritual' with several men.  His capture of Sayaka goes awry.  Pairings: Sayaka/unnamed male x4-5, unnamed miko/unnamed male x4-5 (x9), Byakuya (solo).

 

**(Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – Mine is the Grandeur…/…of Melancholy Burning)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJsvzCobeTM** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJsvzCobeTM)

            More than 200 miles to the northeast of the village of Kotobukiya and as InuYasha and his pack slept peacefully in that village’s inn, a strange, polygonal shape crossed the night sky a mile above the Pacific Ocean, heading west just a few miles off Honshu’s northeast coast.  Illuminated by the faint light of the waning quarter moon, it bore the shape of a white origami crane, an extremely large one with a ten foot length and fifteen foot wingspan. 

            Atop the crane rode a male figure dressed in a fine hakama, haori and vestment made from robin’s egg blue and lilac silk.  He wore a sheathed sword across his back and he wore his long, silky black hair bound in a high ponytail that danced in the oncoming airflow.  His pale, creamy white skin flawless in complexion and his facial features high and elegant, he was possessed of an effeminate male beauty enhanced by the ruby red gloss he had applied to his lips, his cobalt blue eyes glowing softly with a playful intelligence.  His ears were tapered to fine points like Sesshomaru’s or Shippo’s, for he was not human, but youkai.  He was spawn of Naraku, the evil demon lord’s sole surviving incarnation and a wind demon like his predecessor, the wind witch Kagura.

            His name: Mugen no Byakuya.  _White Night_ _of Dreams_.

            A ‘voice’ entered Byakuya’s mind as he flew west, smooth, dark, and loaded with malicious intent: Naraku’s.  Besides malice, Naraku’s voice also carried a hint of thinly-veiled pain.  _“InuYasha and his pack are far away from you, as is Sesshomaru, but remain disciplined,”_ Naraku commanded of his incarnation remotely via telepathy.  _“Mask your youki as much as you are able.  Do not allow the priestess to detect you too soon.”_

            _“Yes, my lord,”_ Byakuya responded obediently to his master, also by telepathy.  His telepathic voice emulated the one with which he spoke aloud: higher and breathier than Naraku’s rich, malevolent baritone and more feminine, soft and sexy in its own right.

            Suddenly, Byakuya felt a dagger of pain strike deep in his chest, dangerously near his heart.  He gasped out and clutched at his chest out of reflex, feeling the fiber of his very life force fluctuating within him unnervingly.  As an incarnation of Naraku, his life was linked to his that of the evil demon lord and he would live only as long as Naraku did.  By that link, Naraku’s pain was Byakuya’s and Naraku was seriously ill.

            The dark hanyou had possessed a mostly-complete Shikon no Tama for over a decade; during that time he had never been further than arms’ reach from it, even housing it directly inside his body for long periods.  At some point, the energy that radiated from it had corrupted the biological processes on which his demonic amalgamation of a body operated.  His battles against InuYasha and Sesshomaru and their respective packs were marked by his ability to easily regenerate parts of his body that they severed or destroyed, but not even he could regenerate himself from damage taking place at the cellular level.  Left unchecked, his body would consume itself from the inside out and he would die.   In Byakuya’s mind, likely catalysts for the corruption were Naraku’s jewel-driven reformation of his body at the enchanted mountain of Hakurei or more recently, his use of the Shikon jewel to unleash the demon Magatsuhi upon the world.  He had observed the latter event personally and saw the jewel glowing most ominously when Naraku accepted it into his chest.

            Naraku had found that the most effective remedy for his illness was a miko’s reiki, her demon purifying spiritual energy.  Direct, measured exposure to it cleansed his flesh of its corruption and restored his body to order, although a temporary one.  The evil half-demon had been antagonizing various priestesses around Japan for more than sixty years and now their weapon of choice against him was his lifeline.  Therefore, Naraku dispatched Byakuya to find and capture or subdue powerful shrine maidens from which Naraku would take their reiki, usually with fatal results. 

            On this night, Naraku directed Byakuya to a miko that lived along Japan’s east coast.  To his concern as well as Byakuya’s, she would be third of the month, triple the number in the previous three months combined.  As time went by and Naraku’s illness progressed, he needed reiki in increasingly larger amounts more and more often, and he and Byakuya both knew that shrine maidens with such reserves of it were a finite, ever-dwindling resource.

            Below, along the dark coastline, Byakuya spotted his destination, a prosperous fishing village that exported their catches to villages further inland.  Many boats of different sizes and configurations were moored at the village’s assorted piers, and lanterns hung throughout its quiet streets at regular intervals to define the village’s size to Byakuya’s eyes.  More than a thousand people lived in it and the male wind demon wondered grimly if any of them would live to the morning.  His pulse quickened, part of him dreading what was to come, but by Naraku’s design, obedience to Naraku’s will was an intractable part of his personality and so he pressed on.

            A Shinto shrine sat recessed high up a thickly-forested hill that overlooked the village and the ocean.  The miko that Byakuya sought resided there.  The wind demon pitched his giant paper crane’s nose downward and descended to the shrine, leaping off it with demonic grace and falling into the forest that surrounded it.  Guiding his fall with small impulses of his youki and using his youki to decelerate at his fall’s end, he landed silently in a tall oak tree that gave him a clear view of the shrine’s courtyard.  Above him, his crane shrunk in size and glided downward in a wide circle to weave through leaves and tree branches and land in his palm.  He folded it up and stowed it in his haori.

            The shrine’s layout was typical of the others Byakuya had seen during his time in Japan as Naraku’s servant.  A dirt path from the inland side of the fishing village wove uphill through the forest and ended in a staircase of stone.  At the staircase’s summit stood a _torii_ , an arched gate made of carved wood and painted brilliant red that, in Shinto philosophy, marked where the ‘profane’ ended and the ‘sacred’ began.  Beyond the torii lay a grassy courtyard bisected by a stone path leading to the shrine’s _haiden_ , a sprawling, one-story worship hall, and beyond the haiden lay the _honden_ , the structure in which an abstract physical representation of the _kami_ stood enshrined.   Long rows of well-maintained cherry trees stood to either side of the path leading to the haiden, separated by standing lanterns that lit the path.

            To his intrigue, Byakuya could see dozens of human males gathered and conversing under the shroud of the cherry trees; he found it odd to see so many loitering around such a place at such a time of night.  Another peculiarity was their mode of dress.  The fishing village below the shrine was prosperous but not exactly wealthy, and the men Byakuya saw all wore exquisitely detailed garments of fine silk, clothing much more expensive than what even a fortunate fisherman might buy for himself or his family.   He also saw that enough men were present that if he made his presence known, at least a few of them could raise alarm before he killed them all.  Therefore, he chose to reconnoiter the shrine grounds by stealth.

            Byakuya cupped a hand over his right eye.  Inside his head, the optic nerve of his eye severed from his brain and with a will of its own, his detached eyeball wriggled within its socket to pop out into his palm.  In his palm, it twitched and undulated as it mutated to sprout two tiny bat wings that began to flap and lift it up into the air.  By his remote, telepathic control, Byakuya’s eyeball ‘drone’ then sped away to fly silent and unnoticed above the crowd of men in the shrine’s courtyard below and enter the worship hall through an open side window.

            Once it had entered the worship hall, Byakuya guided his eye high into the darkness of the hall’s wooden rafters, gaining a vantage point from which to observe the hall’s interior.  Immediately, he spotted not one miko, but several, ten in total, each of them wearing the same immaculate red-and-white miko garb.  Nine of them, each a lovely young Japanese woman likely not older than twenty years, circled the hall’s interior walls in a slow, methodic procession, the white socks covering their feet sliding easily over the polished hardwood floor as they chanted in feminine harmony.  Byakuya realized that he had arrived during some sort of night-time Shinto ceremony.  He wondered; perhaps this was Naraku’s intent?

            Nine of the ten miko conducted the procession, while the tenth knelt in the center of the hall in meditative prayer.  Compared to the others, she was visibly older, more mature, and decidedly more ample in her chest and hips.  She appeared to be closer to thirty years of age than twenty.  Byakuya found her strikingly attractive and, like InuYasha or Sesshomaru with their respective females, the breeding heat of spring caused desire to ignite within him easily as he looked upon her. 

            Byakuya’s heart sped up and he caught himself imagining what kind of figure the priestess concealed beneath her immaculate outfit, how she would feel and the sounds she might make if she accepted his hips between her thighs and took him into her body.  She wore her silky black hair cropped very close to her head while her fellow miko wore their hair longer and gathered into low tails.  Even from his position in the forest, Byakuya could _feel_ the miko’s reiki sweeping outward from her body in rhythmic pulses as she prayed.  She had great power and so she was most likely the one Naraku had sent him to find.

            Naraku’s voice entered Byakuya’s mind again.  _“She is quite fetching, isn’t she?”_ the oni lord commented to Byakuya, referring to the head priestess his incarnation observed.  With his telepathy, he could visualize Byakuya’s fantasies of him and the miko joining their bodies in a sort of romantic, affectionate manner and the vile hanyou found them rather tame for his taste.  Therefore, he overrode Byakuya’s imaginations with some of his own.

            Byakuya’s breath stilled and his heart began to _slam_ in his chest, hammering against his lungs by the vivid, intensely erotic images entering his mind.  He could see the lovely, as-yet nameless miko fully nude and on her knees before him, gazing up at him with total female supplication as she took the full, eleven-inch length of his massive demonic cock past her pouting lips and deep into her throat over and over. 

            The miko’s breasts were stunningly large and full upon her chest and she lifted them with her hands as if to offer them to Byakuya.  She then pressed them to either side of his cock, squeezing it between them and beginning to pump them up and down its meaty length to complement the most un-maidenlike talents of her mouth and tongue.   The expression of supplication in the miko’s eyes remained as the image shifted to that of her laying back against a clean futon somewhere in the shrine, her body illuminated by gently flickering candlelight as she spread her thighs wide to bare the beautiful, bulging female mound between them.

            The image continued and the miko’s big breasts and flat stomach heaved by her audible, husky breathing as she reached down between her thighs with both hands, using her well-manicured fingers to spread the delicate petals of her pussy far apart.  She offered her body for the taking and Byakuya could hear her heart pumping hard and fast in his own ears.  The lusting male wind demon could see the swollen, living pearl of her clit standing at full attention in its elegant protective hood.  He could also see the glistening pink, creaming wet tissues of her pussy’s interior quivering visibly in time with her heartbeat as her exposed vaginal orifice oozed one juicy dollop of her body’s transparent, lubricating nectar after another. 

            The priestess was completely ready for Byakuya, practically begging to be fucked, even impregnated.  Just as the male wind demon could see the broad crown of his cock descending to her pussy, pushing past its silky outer lips and beginning to stretch, then breach its weeping inner gate, the image dissipated.  It left him fighting for breath as his heart raced in his chest and his cock throbbed at full mast in his hakama.  The male wind demon could _smell_ hot pre-cum pumping up and out of him already and he avoided a sudden and extremely messy orgasm in his pants by the thinnest of margins.

            Byakuya could _hear_ Naraku’s evil grin at his state of arousal, for the size of his cock as it appeared in Naraku’s mental projection was not imaginary.  Right then, the male wind demon had almost a full foot of thick, meaty male organ pulsing between his thighs, hot, hard and heavy as its crown nudged high up against his lower abdomen under his clothes.  Byakuya was Naraku’s creation and Naraku had endowed him with such a cock and a set of big, highly productive balls to match so that in the event Byakuya captured one of InuYasha or Sesshomaru’s women, the well-hung wind demon could bring her before his master and give her the fuck of a lifetime, the _last_ one of her life.  Naraku wanted the head of a male’s cock, either his own or Byakuya’s, throbbing right up against Kagome’s or Sango’s or even Rin’s bruised, violated womb, his boiling hot demon seed absolutely flooding it and pumping into her very ovaries the moment he murdered them. 

            “ _Excellent, Byakuya,_ ” Naraku praised to his incarnation.  “ _Your desire is powerful and not only is this miko bitch rich with purifying energy, she is exceedingly beautiful.  She will make a fine vessel for your seed…and mine._ ”

            Byakuya’s breathed slowly and deeply to calm his heart.  The pleading, desperate expression upon the priestess’ face as he entered her remained fresh in his mind’s eye.  _“ Our seed?  Yours and mine?”_ he asked.

            “ _Of course.  I can’t let you have all the fun now, can I?_ ” Naraku replied.  His telepathic voice became rich and sultry with a sexual undertone that had Byakuya’s pulse speeding up all over again.  By the sound of Naraku’s excitement, the events of the night to come promised to be completely insane.“ _Right now, InuYasha and Sesshomaru are undoubtedly very busy with their women, and the breeding heat that they experience has both of us in its grip, as well.  Once I take what I need from her, you and I will enjoy the delights of this miko’s body together.  I don’t think she’ll refuse us, either.  Watch and see what I mean.”_

            Watching through his eyeball drone, Byakuya returned his attention to the lovely maidens inside the worship hall.  After a minute or two of the younger women’s chanting, the elder priestess opened her radiant, exotic golden eyes and stood.  “It is time,” she spoke.

            The younger priestesses halted their procession, turned to face their head priestess and bowed respectfully.  “Yes, Sayaka-sama,” they replied.

 _Sayaka_.  “ _So, that’s her name_ ,” Byakuya mused privately, now knowing the name of his and Naraku’s soon-to-be lover and/or _victim_.  He continued to watch as the young priestesses slid the hall’s front door open and filed out to gather on the hall’s front porch, immediately gaining the attention of the men waiting outside.  Dutifully and with ceremony, one of the women pulled on a rope that hung from the porch’s ceiling.  The rope connected to a gong and the gong’s low, metallic din resounded across the shrine grounds, causing the men in the courtyard to silence themselves and abandon their conversations as they converged upon the worship hall’s opened entrance.

            Close to fifty men entered the worship hall in orderly single file, each one making their respect to the young women at the entrance.  The women all gave alluring blushes in response.  Once inside, each man took his place at the foot of a mat lain on the hardwood floor.  The mats were placed on the floor in a neat rectangular, row-and-column pattern ten mats wide and five mats deep.  The number of men present meant that only a few mats went unoccupied.  With each man having taken his place, the nine miko outside re-entered the worship hall and closed the door behind them.  They then strode around the formation of their male guests and stood abreast of each other behind Sayaka.

            The men present bowed respectfully to Sayaka and her miko cadre.  Sayaka and the other women returned the bow and the men knelt upon their mats as Sayaka directed five of her younger shrine maidens to departed from the others, collect five wicker baskets from a nearby shelf, and move to the side of the first man in each of the five rows.  Each woman smiled as she held her basket out to the man near her, and in turn, those men each reached into his robe to produce a small bag of gold coins and place it in the basket as an offering.  The young priestesses then gave a quiet, appreciative, yet somehow husky ‘arigato’ and moved to the next man down the row, then the next, and the next until every man in the worship hall had made his offering for the operation of the shrine, and for ‘services’ soon to be rendered.

            The junior priestesses set their now gold-laden baskets back on the shelf from which they had taken them and returned to their place beside the remaining juniors behind Sayaka.  Sayaka then stepped forward and moved to stand among the group of kneeling men before her.  She pressed her hands flat against one another just in front of her ample chest and began to pray quietly, gathering her spiritual energy about her.  An ethereal blue glow enveloped her body and as she prayed, the glow expanded in size to surround not only herself, but the men around her.  The men began to fidget in place, their breathing speeding up and growing harsh as each felt Sayaka’s power washing over him, seeping into him to saturate his blood.

            A dark, knowing smile spread across Sayaka’s face as she sensed the men’s arousal building.  Through her miko energy she could feel nearly fifty male hearts picking up speed and she could also feel each man’s cock stirring within his fine kimono, rising to full erection in very little time.  She only increased the amount of power she put out, taking the men deeper and deeper into their pleasure.  Her energy affected each man’s blood circulation, enhancing it and allowing their cocks to achieve states of length, girth, and sheer hardness and rigidity they could never have elsewhere.  Groaning and gasping together as the erection of a lifetime pounded between their thighs, the men suddenly took to their feet and converged on Sayaka as if possessed, their hearts, minds and their very sexualities at her command.

            Sayaka giggled in rising excitement as one man approached her from behind, slipping one hand around her waist to pull her back against his firm chest.  He sought out one of her full breasts with his other hand, beginning to squeeze and knead it through her white haori as he began to nuzzle at her throat and thrust his hips against her ample rear.  She breathed rapid and husky, her heart beating faster with growing anticipation and arousal, for the cock of the man behind her felt awesomely hard and huge as he pumped against her.  Another man approached her from the front and closed in to grasp her chin and take her mouth with his in a hard, possessive kiss.  To the miko’s appreciation, he had cleaned his mouth thoroughly very recently and so his lips did not carry an unpleasant taste.  She opened her mouth to him and as she began to play her tongue against his, she lifted one foot from the floor to hike her thigh up his side and beckon his hips to hers.

            As Sayaka bumped and ground, kissed and thrust herself back and forth between the first two men, others joined in wherever they could fit.  She held her hands out to them and they began to kiss at her palms, suckling and lapping at her fingers.  Still other men contented themselves by stripping her clean, odorless feet of their socks and worshipping them and every toe on them with their hands and mouths.  Unable to get close to the lovely miko, the remainder of Sayaka’s male guests rubbed and ground at their cocks through their fine kimono until their pre-cum oozed through the silk, anticipating the act to come.

            After a few minutes of simply enjoying the attention, Sayaka gathered her breath and spoke with a hot rasp.  She could feel the creamy liquid heat of her own need slipping down her inner thighs.  It was time.  “ _Enough_ ,” she panted, pushing the men around her away and settling herself back onto her feet.  Almost affectionately and with a sultry gleam glowing in her half-lidded golden eyes, she brushed her hands over the handsome faces of the men nearest her, their skin almost burning hot to the touch and beginning to perspire. 

            The elder miko then eased herself away from them as her junior priestesses rolled out several large brass pans from a nearby closet, ten in total, one for Sayaka and every other miko in the hall.  Each pan spanned around four feet in diameter, flat-bottomed and slightly concave at the edges, and the junior priestesses lay them on the floor in two rows of five.  Together, Sayaka and the other women stepped onto the pans.  The younger ones glanced between each other, blushing furiously, then looked to their miko mistress.

            Sayaka commanded her women with a nod and all together, they began to slip out of their miko clothing.  They removed their red hakama first, exposing their long, slender, creamy white legs and thighs to the hungry eyes of the lusty men watching them and tossing the garments away.  They had foregone any sort of undergarment and so when they slipped out of their white haori, they stood fully unclothed for their male guests to admire.  Together, all ten women knelt in their pans and Sayaka gestured for the men to join them in nudity.

            One after another, the men divested themselves of their fine robes to reveal their powerful male bodies to the women.  To the mikos’ delight, they were all clean and well-groomed, their cocks jutting from them with steely hardness.  With nearly fifty men in attendance but only ten women, each naked miko soon found herself by no fewer than four equally-naked, powerfully aroused ‘customers,’ some of them surrounded by five, including Sayaka.

            Sayaka reached out to brush her hands over the hard, male lengths presented to her, relishing in her guests’ husky breathing at her touch.  She took firm hold of two, one thick member in each hand, and began to stroke them languidly, licking her lips in anticipation at the sight of the glistening pre-cum beginning to ooze from their flared crowns.  Though her view of her fellow maidens was mostly blocked by muscular male thighs, hips, and stomachs, not to mention large, pulsing cocks and multiple sets of tense, heavy balls, she spoke for them to hear.  “Well, go on, girls.  Enjoy yourselves!” she bid, her voice and her bare pussy dripping with growing desire.

            Together, Sayaka and the other mikos began to service their men in earnest, jacking and sucking their big, beautiful cocks with feverish enthusiasm.  Sayaka held one meaty ‘sword’ in each hand, stroking them in long, measured glides of her fists, and she encouraged a third man to present his own hard organ to her mouth.  She opened her lips wide and accepted his full length past them, cupping and lathing him with her tongue as he pushed into her throat.  He grasped her short-haired head carefully with both hands and began to pump his hips against it, fucking her mouth with long, hearty thrusts.

**(Soundtrack: Iron Maiden – Prowler)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCViwXz7zAM** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCViwXz7zAM)

            Meanwhile, Byakuya could feel his own sexual need threatening his very sanity.  This Sayaka wasn’t simply a priestess – she was a _prostitute!_   He felt his knees buckling beneath him and his cock felt like an inflexible third arm in his hakama.  Shaking and struggling for breath, he settled down onto the thick tree branch beneath him and sat back against the tree’s trunk.  He spread his thighs and with trembling hands, he began to unfasten and open his clothes.  He opened his haori first to bare his broad, well-defined chest and washboard-like abdomen to the warm spring night, then opened his hakama just enough to free his cock.  It lay upon his abdomen as a hot, heavy brand of living steel, silky globs of his demon seed escaping him already.

            Watching Sayaka alternate between sucking and stroking five different cocks with his disembodied eye and his own throbbing monster with the one still in his head, Byakuya began to fist himself slowly with one hand, digging the fingertips of his other hand into the bark of the tree trunk behind him by the incredible pleasure.  He was so hard that he could feel his heart beating in his hand, his cock jerking and pulsing visibly with every powerful beat.  Already, his balls were huge and tense in their smooth sac and the male wind demon could feel his prostate twitching eagerly, siphoning his balls’ precious content away and feeding it up his cock’s twitching length.

            Naraku chastised his incarnation for his impatience.  _“Settling for your hand, are you? You would touch yourself when if you wait, you could have as many as ten hungry pussies and the fertile wombs at their end?”_

 _“Y-yes,”_ Byakuya breathed aloud, continuing to stroke himself and quickly switching back to telepathy.  The mere thought of a woman’s flesh opening around him, swallowing him inside almost sent him over the edge.  _“I’m so big, so hard and full.  My seed escapes me already.  I need this so badly, my lord.”_

 _“Very well, my lovely Byakuya,”_ Naraku permitted.  _“Relieve yourself as you need.  Your body will replace what you spend very quickly, in any event.”_

            Back inside the worship hall, male grunts and female moans and giggles mingled as several men reached their first orgasms.  The man who pumped his cock in and out of Sayaka’s mouth groaned out and buried his balls against the elder miko’s chin as he erupted right down her throat.  Hot, thick semen surged up and out of him to slam against her gullet in strong, repeating spurts and her throat contracted over and over as she swallowed everything he gave her.  Still coming, he pulled out of her mouth suddenly, allowing her to take a desperately needed breath, and his final few ejaculations burst out all over her face to coat it completely in thick, white reproductive fluid.  Sayaka’s miko energy had affected not only the men’s ability to achieve erection, but the behavior of the very cores of their testes, causing them to produce their seed at a rate several times higher than normal.  Their cocks had never been bigger or harder and their balls had never been more productive, allowing them to unleash the biggest, messiest loads of their lives.  Now, each lovely miko happily took the full brunt of their enhanced virility.

            The other men around Sayaka began to come, as well.  The elder priestess brought two of them over the edge of their pleasure with her hands and frantically shoved her mouth down onto one’s cock as he began to shoot, while the other men fisted themselves to completion to deliver their creamy seed onto her face and breasts, her hair and her back, all over her until almost every square inch of her skin bore their genetic information.  She became Japan’s prototypical, archetypical, _stereotypical_ bukkake queen in mere seconds.  Soon, thick rivers of hot cum flowed down her bare body to gather in the brass pan beneath her, forming a pool of sperm-loaded ooze that grew rapidly in width and depth.

            Byakuya jacked himself faster, more urgently and thrust his hips up into his hand at the sight of Sayaka literally bathing in copious male juice while her younger priestesses received a similar treatment upon their nubile bodies.  His heavy balls tightened in their smooth sac and his cock grew suddenly harder and thicker in his hand as the hot, creamy pressure built, beginning to move inside him and he knew he couldn’t hold it off any longer.  Frantically, he ripped a thick tree branch away from the big one he reclined on and clamped his teeth down into the relatively softer wood to keep himself from crying out as he took himself into orgasm.  Just a few more well-lubricated glides of his fist and he erupted potently, the head of his cock flaring wide and huge, the underside of his cock bulging outward as massive gouts of his thick white cream finished their eleven-inch journey to begin leaping out of him with an audible _gush, gush, gush_.

            With his mouth blocked by the branch, Byakuya closed his eyes and released a harsh, nasal “ _Nngh!”_ as he came incredibly hard.  By Naraku’s design, the male wind demon’s ejaculations dwarfed those of the human males in the worship hall below him, impressive as they were.  The first few, most powerful ones surged out of his cockhead’s thin, male slit in long, rope-like streams, reaching out a full foot to splatter all over his tightly-clenched abdomen, his heaving chest, and even his pleasure-stricken face.  He turned his head to his right, away from his spewing cock, so as prevent any of his cum from getting into his empty right eye socket. 

            Over and over Byakuya shot upon himself as Sayaka’s guests unloaded on her in the same way.  Simple gravity caused the great volume of his creamy essence to slip and slide off his pale muscular flesh in dense, lumpy globs and soak into his clothes.  He knew he would need to bathe and wash his clothes before the night was through and he removed the branch in his mouth with a gasp, pumping his cock to milk out his last few loads as he caught his breath and calmed his heart.

 _“My, you are quite a sight!  I doubt that there’s a woman alive whose body can hold all that you can shoot,”_ Naraku observed of his incarnation’s messy state with twisted paternal pride.  Huge amounts of thick, white semen, altogether bearing untold billions of powerful, healthy wind demon sperm, glistened on Byakuya’s abs, chest, and face, dripping down his cheeks and chin and matting his silky black bangs to his forehead.  Some flowed over his ruby-glossed lips and he licked it away to consider the salty, mineral taste, knowing that Sayaka did the same at that very moment.  Still trembling in ecstasy, he produced a rag from a pocket in his haori and began to clean himself up as best he could, though by the sheer amount of cum he had shot, the rag reached saturation quickly and all he ended up doing was simply pushing that which it couldn’t soak up around on his skin.

            Back inside the worship hall, Sayaka’s guests began to disengage from the other priestesses and focus their amorous attentions, their sexual ‘worship’ on her.  They gathered around her in numbers as large as space provided and began fisting their big, hard cocks urgently, reaching orgasm with ease even though each man had already come two or three times.  Sayaka didn’t bother touching any of them this time; she simply folded her hands in her lap, closed her eyes and tilted her face to the ceiling, basking in the creamy liquid warmth of what felt like gallons of hot male fluid raining down on her.

            Sated at last, the men separated themselves from the women to seek their clothes and dress in an unsteady, stumbling manner, having expended a great deal of energy and _fluid_ in the past hour.  Making a ‘pilgrimage’ to Sayaka’s shrine was great fun for them, but exhausting at the same time.  Before they stepped out, though, the cum-drenched Sayaka rose from her cum-filled pan to retrieve a large brass bowl from a nearby shelf and set it on the floor among the pans the other shrine maidens occupied.  The younger priestesses then rose and assisted each other in pouring the creamy liquid contents of their pans into the bowl.  Altogether, the forty or fifty men had produced nearly two gallons of their seed, leaving the bowl almost brimming full.

            The priestesses gathered to kneel around the bowl of cum and Sayaka took it into her hands, feeling its heat and weight and contemplating the sheer reproductive energy vested in it.  She then brought it to her lips and drank deeply from it for all to see, handing it to the miko next to her, who drank from it and passed it off to another miko in turn until each woman’s belly was full and the bowl was completely empty.  The ten priestesses then stood and faced their now-dressed male guests to bow in appreciation, even as thick semen flowed and cooled upon their faces and bodies.

            “My lovely guests, thank you very much for your patronage.  _Mmm_ …and your _offering_ ,” Sayaka said huskily, rising from her bow and planting a hand on a cocked hip, cupping one of her big, full breasts with the other.  Her guests’ hot fluids caused her fingertips to slip over her breast and the rosy nipple at its peak with ease. “Please, _come_ again anytime.”

            Smiling goofily, the men returned the bow and showed themselves out of the worship hall, leaving the priestesses alone to clean themselves up.  Once all of the men left the shrine grounds, Byakuya saw his opportunity to act.  Through his eyeball drone, he saw Sayaka and her fellow mikos collect their clothes and file out the worship hall’s back door to the shrine’s rear courtyard.  He guided his eye to follow them and he saw them proceed down a stone path that led to a small wooden house standing at the back of the courtyard: the shrine’s bath house.  The bath house was much smaller that the worship hall and had only one entrance; Byakuya decided to approach Sayaka and her women there.

            Byakuya fastened his cum-soaked clothes and leapt down from his perch to land silently inside the shrine’s perimeter wall.  Once he saw through his disembodied eye that the last miko had entered the bath and closed the door behind her, he made his way around the worship hall to guide his eye into an upturned hand.  Its little bat wings retracted into its sides and now wingless, it wriggled in his palm to orient itself properly with his empty eye socket.  The wind demon bent his head forward and lifted his eye to its socket, his eye entering his head with a soft _plop_.  His optic nerve reconnected and restored his binocular vision with no ill effects.

 _“Now, Byakuya,”_ Naraku commanded in Byakuya’s mind.  _“Capture Sayaka and bring her to me.  Kill the others, leave no witnesses.”_

            Byakuya swallowed thickly.  The next few minutes promised not to be pleasant, but he would obey his creator.  _“Yes, my lord,”_ he replied silently.  He stepped forward toward the bath, summoning his youki about him to perform another ability Naraku had blessed him with: duplication.  As he stepped, he left a perfect copy of himself standing behind him, his copy forming as his shadow might if a powerful light source traveled by him at great speed.  He formed another copy and another until ten examples of Byakuya stood outside the shrine’s bath house, one for each of the priestesses inside.  Each copy carried a sword like the original and they unsheathed them at once in perfect synchronization, their blades gleaming in the moonlight as they began to advance upon the bath.

            The original Byakuya guided one of his copies to approach the bath house’s sliding double doors so as not to directly endanger himself.  The moment that false Byakuya placed his hand upon the left door’s handle, a flash of bright blue light burst through the door in a hail of flaming splinters and pierced his chest to vaporize him instantly. 

 _A purifying arrow!_ The other Byakuyas leapt back and another arrow burst through the bath house door, this one aimed directly at the original Byakuya himself.  It veered low and seared through his right knee to sever everything below it.  He cried out in sudden agony and collapsed onto one side.  With the blinding pain came the scent of ozone and burning, melting demonic flesh - his own.  His abrupt loss of focus caused his copies to dissolve and vanish into wisps of blue flame as quickly as he had made them, leaving him seriously wounded and outnumbered.

            The bath house doors slid open and Sayaka emerged, still nude and glazed with semen but armed with a longbow she kept stored inside the bath in case of demon-related emergencies.  Her nine fellow priestesses followed her out to stand behind her on the bath’s front deck, looking upon the wounded Byakuya with obvious disdain.  One of them held a quiver of arrows out Sayaka and the elder miko slipped it over her bare back, routing its sling between her breasts.  She loaded another arrow into her bow as she descended the bath house’s front steps with beautiful, lethal grace.  “You’re a skilled one, demon.  I almost didn’t sense you,” she spoke coolly, advancing upon the wounded Byakuya unashamed of her nudity and taking aim upon him.  “Not many can mask their youki as well as you can.  Fewer still can make duplicates of themselves.”

            Swiftly, Byakuya erected a magic barrier around him to prevent Sayaka from shooting him again.  It shimmered around him as a spherical shell of transparent fuchsia light, much like the ones Naraku could create.  Unimpressed, Sayaka loosed her next arrow squarely at Byakuya’s head and the arrow exploded upon his barrier in a gust of wind and a shower of white hot sparks, bursting as a small, yet extremely powerful cannon shell.  Byakuya’s barrier wavered visibly under the strain and both he and Sayaka saw that he couldn’t maintain it forever.

            Sayaka drew another arrow from her quiver, reloading her bow casually.  “Your barrier is pretty tough, too.  Who are you and what do you want?” she asked.

            “I am Byakuya…of the Dreams,” Byakuya answered with quivering breath, clutching at his shorn-off stump of a right leg.  Sayaka’s arrow had cauterized the new end of his leg instantly but the veins and arteries there were still disconnected and so he bled internally, suffering tremendous pain with each beat of his heart.  “ _Ungh_ …my master sent me to find you and take you to him.  He is ill and he needs your help…Sayaka-sama.”

            “You know my name,” Sayaka noted.  “What is your master’s name, Mr. Byakuya of the Dreams?”

            “His name…his name is Naraku.”

            Sayaka paused, then tilted her head back and laughed aloud, a throaty laugh of incredulity.  “I know of your master!  I know…that he’s the worst enemy we miko have.  Every woman that undergoes miko training these days learns the name of _Naraku_.”

            The elder miko aimed at Byakuya again and released her arrow upon the wind demon’s barrier, this time shattering it completely.  Vulnerable, the wind demon raised his sword with his right hand to try and shield himself somehow and Sayaka responded by using a purifying arrow to blow his hand and most of his forearm clean off.  His sword careened clear off the shrine grounds to land somewhere in the forest.  Byakuya cried out in escalating agony and fell backward to the ground, unarmed, unshielded and missing significant parts of two limbs.

            Sayaka stepped forward to stand directly above Byakuya.  Had he not been so hideously injured, he might have enjoyed the view, as she stood above him with absolutely everything her still cum-drenched body had to offer lined up perfectly for him to see.  He could see her bare thighs and hips, the beautiful, blossomed mound of her pussy framed between them.  Beyond that, he could see the flat, toned pane of her abdomen and the sizable swells of her breasts heaving in and out with her breathing, her lovely face and gorgeous golden eyes gazing down at him with lethal intent.

            Sayaka’s purifying reiki had sapped Byakuya’s demonic body of most of its strength and so he lay helpless beneath her.  Then, the miko sniffed the air, catching the scent of Byakuya’s cum clinging heavily to his body by his earlier masturbation.  To her, the scent was distinctive even with that of the all the semen still stuck to her body filling her nose.  Curious and enticed, she reached down to untie the sash that held the demon male’s haori closed, knowing that he didn’t have the strength to resist, and peeled the breasts of his haori open to find his highly attractive chest and abdomen still glistening with a coat of his creamy seed.

            “What’s this?  You’re fucking _soaked_ ,” Sayaka awed, taken aback by Byakuya’s apparent virility.  “So much cum.  How many times did you have to get off to do this yourself?”

            “Just once.  I was watching while you… _you know_ ,” Byakuya confessed, turning his head to look away from Sayaka and escape the amused expression upon her face.

            “You were watching, huh?” Sayaka posed in rhetoric, her voice dripping with demon-killing miko glee.  “Tell me, is your master watching _this?_ ”

            Sayaka reloaded her bow one last time, drawing her arrow back against her bowstring and aiming its head directly for Byakuya’s heart.  Time seemed to slow down for Byakuya as he gazed fearfully at the arrowhead that Sayaka would use to kill him, then followed it up the arrow’s shaft and focused on Sayaka’s beautiful, yet somehow hideous face.  Her eyes narrowed and her lips curled upward as she released her arrow, and Byakuya screwed his own eyes shut, preparing for the end…

**-To be continued-**


	5. Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naraku intervenes at Sayaka's shrine to save Byakuya's life.  He then uses Sayaka's reiki to temporarily cure his body of the corruption caused by long exposure to the Shikon no Tama.  Naraku and Byakuya then violate Sayaka and her nine junior priestesses in their shrine's bath house.  The nine junior priestesses become pregnant by Byakuya very quickly and Naraku, being sterile, orders Byakuya to impregnate Sayaka, as well.  Pairings: Naraku/Sayaka (NC), Byakuya/unnamed priestess (NC) x9.

 

**(Continued from pt. 1)**

            Sayaka reloaded her bow one last time, drawing her arrow back against her bowstring and aiming its head directly for Byakuya’s heart.  Time seemed to slow down for Byakuya as he gazed fearfully at the arrowhead that Sayaka would use to kill him, then followed it up the arrow’s shaft and focused on Sayaka’s beautiful, yet somehow hideous face.  Her alluring golden eyes narrowed and her lips curled upward as she released her arrow, and Byakuya screwed his own eyes shut, grimacing as he prepared for the end.

            A flat, circular barrier formed of a demon’s youki formed above Byakuya’s bare chest, directly between it and Sayaka’s arrow as the arrow accelerated downward.  The enchanted arrow’s head contacted the barrier and exploded unexpectedly with such force that it threw Sayaka clean off of her feet, tossing her several feet rearward so that she landed hard on the bath house’s front steps.  The barrier deflected any shock or fragmentation away from Byakuya, sparing him from further injury.  Sayaka’s maidens rushed to help their mistress to her feet but before any of the women could react, Sayaka sensed a demonic aura more intense than any she had ever felt before manifest inside the bath house.  The aura radiated with an evil so perverse that it seemed to twist her senses inside her head.

            Sayaka leapt back away from the demon-possessed bath house.  “Girls!  _Run!_ ” she called out, though too late.  The lanterns lighting the bath’s interior blew out by a sudden wind from _inside_ the house and a terrible, yawning darkness consumed it.  Dozens of long, slender tendrils of glossy black demonic flesh shot out from that unnatural void like leaping snakes and seized Sayaka’s young naked priestesses by coiling tight around their ankles and wrists, waists and necks.  They cried out in terrified surprise as the horrible things lifted them off their feet, holding them immobile and totally helpless.

            “I _was_ watching, priestess,” a voice spoke from within the darkness occupying the bath house, Naraku’s voice.  Here, he spoke aloud and not with telepathy.  “Now, _you_ will watch.  You will watch your women _die_.”

**(Soundtrack: Arch Enemy – Sinister Mephisto)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6WD68WbFf4** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6WD68WbFf4)

            Naraku tightened his tendrils’ grip around the young priestesses’ throats, using them as living tourniquets to ratchet up the strangling pressure gradually until not one woman could draw another breath.  Through his tendrils he could feel each woman’s pulse in her neck, her heart beating faster and faster from both sheer terror and lack of oxygen.  He wondered: what would kill them first?  Suffocation?  Heart attacks?  Brain aneurysms?  They thrashed and struggled wildly, desperately, trying to free themselves and breathe again, to no avail.

            Sneering, Sayaka took aim with bow and enchanted arrow and Naraku adjusted his demonic tentacles to hold his asphyxiating female victims directly between himself and Sayaka as human shields.  The elder miko realized that she couldn’t hit Naraku without hitting at least one of her women in the process.  Her arrow alone would be lethal enough to them even without a charge of her reiki.  Their frantic movements were becoming slower, weaker by the second and she knew they wouldn’t live much longer. “Stop,” Sayaka called out to Naraku.  Her voice immediately assumed a pleading tone.  “Stop, _please!  Don’t kill them!”_

            Naraku grew thoughtful.  He could use the young mikos’ lives as leverage to coerce Sayaka into cooperating with him.  “Drop your weapons and I’ll consider it,” he answered.

            Sayaka hesitated briefly but knew she had no other option.  She gave in and tossed her bow aside.  She then slipped her quiver off of her back and tossed it away, too.  In exchange, Naraku loosened the grip of the tentacles wrapped around the throats of Sayaka’s young women and they all sucked in gasps of desperately-needed air, having been spared from death by less than a minute.  “Come to me, miko,” Naraku ordered.

            With strain, Byakuya used his remaining arm to push himself up into a sitting position and watch as Sayaka stepped toward the bath house now occupied by his master.  By the blood loss caused by the destruction of two of his limbs, his vision blurred and he eased himself back down, slipping into brief unconsciousness.  As the elder miko ascended the bath’s front steps, Naraku manipulated his tentacles to part the group of her nine junior mikos before her, four to one side, five to the other.  The younger women regarded their mistress with fearful expressions as she stepped past them into the darkened bath.

            Sayaka shivered in revulsion as several additional tentacles of Naraku’s emerged from the void the sinister hanyou had made and coiled around her waist, wrists, and ankles to draw her inside.  The things were warm, slick and _alive_ around her.  By Naraku’s telekinetic command, the bath’s lanterns reignited with otherworldly blue flame to reveal his form to her and she recoiled at the sight of him.  The tentacles holding her and her fellow priestesses all sprouted from his bare back.  He had decided to manifest himself as nude as she and his unclothed body was as a withered husk, more corpse than living being.  His hair, normally long, thick and glossy and flowing over his shoulders like liquid tar, had mostly fallen out of his head and what remained was thin, grey and fragile.  His flesh, so pale it had become translucent to the point that Sayaka could see his every blood vessel, clung tightly to his skeleton, hardly any muscle left to fill it out.  His face was thin and gaunt and his inhuman red eyes were sullen and bloodshot, though in his emaciated state he found the mirth to curl his lips upward in one of his signature evil smiles.

            Naraku chuckled darkly.  “Just look at me.  I’m…not a very pretty sight, am I?” he asked of Sayaka.

            The disgusted miko tried to look away from Naraku’s wretched form but he grasped her chin with a withered, yet still powerful hand to keep her facing him.  “Your servant said that you were ill,” she said, fighting the bile building up in her throat.

            “Indeed,” Naraku confirmed.  ‘I’ve come to you for help in that regard.  Now, _purify me_.”

            “ _What?_ ” Sayaka asked incredulously.

            “Isn’t that what mikos do?  Purify ‘filthy’ demons like me?” Naraku inquired.  “After all, are we not the bane of your existence?  And you injured my Byakuya so badly…you should have no trouble with a wretch like me.  Here - let me make it even easier for you.”

            Naraku raised a hand and pressed his fingertips to the hollow of his collarbone.  Hard, sharp talons extended from them with a quiet _flick_ and he plunged them into his flesh, dragging them down his sternum in jerking, sawing motions to rip his own chest open.  From the hideous wound he made in himself he bled not in red but in ink black, the opaque demonic ooze that served as his blood running down his stomach in heavy streams.  Without any visible pain, he grasped the seams of his ribcage and it gave a sickening _crrrack_ as it spread it open to expose the living contents of his chest.

 _Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump._ The sound of Naraku’s heart beating, either a real sound or telepathic one Naraku fed directly into her mind, dominated Sayaka’s senses.  She could see his heart with her own eyes, a pound or so of ink black muscle and blood vessel pulsing hard and fast between his heaving black lungs and it soon began to glow as he concentrated his youki into it, illuminating her face and body with eerie magenta light.  She shrieked in horror and tried to rip herself out of Naraku’s hold, but the sinister demon held her fast with his writhing tentacles.

            Naraku seized one of Sayaka’s hands with his own and drew it to him, shoving it directly between his lungs to press it to his exposed heart.  Sayaka screwed her eyes shut at the nauseating feeling of his most precious organ beating directly against her palm and her reiki swelled within her out of reflex.  “Come on, miko _bitch!_ ” Naraku snarled.  Sayaka’s lovely body began to glow with ethereal light, her purifying energy flowing out of her body and into his in an attempt to destroy him.  “Give it to me.  _Give it all!_ ”

            Sayaka’s reiki entered Naraku’s heart to saturate his very blood.  His rapid heartbeat drove it throughout his entire body and it soaked into his every cell and tissue.  Every vein and artery in his body, from his feet and legs all the way up to the ones in his arms, chest, and neck, glowed with her power and it seared him from within, cleansing his body of its corruption.  “Yes… _yes!_ _More!_ ” he praised to the miko purifying him, consuming her reiki as quickly as she could put it out.

            Naraku’s body began to regenerate to its normal state as Sayaka’s delicious miko energy worked its effect on him.  His skin grew less translucent and muscle began to rebuild beneath it, filling it out visibly so that his seven-foot frame’s weight doubled from a sickly, frail one hundred pounds to nearly two-hundred-fifty in the space of less than a minute.  His hair grew back with similar speed, accomplishing weeks of normal growth in seconds and it returned to its glossy black sheen at once.  Naraku tossed his head back and shook it from side to side as if in ecstasy, happy to feel his long, heavy sable mane weighing down his head again.

            Sayaka saw that her purifying energy wasn’t killing Naraku, it was actually _healing_ him.  She tried to stop the flow but could not.  By that point, she wasn’t feeding it into _him_ , he was sucking it out of _her_ and she no longer had control.  She cried out helplessly, screaming as her strength ebbed away from her own body into Naraku’s and soon, her reserves ran dry.  The flow of her reiki tapered off and ceased and the drained miko collapsed, exhausted, kept standing only by the support of Naraku’s tentacles.

            Naraku pulled Sayaka’s limp hand out of his chest and sealed his chest back up.  He looked down at his newly rejuvenated body, feeling the sheer muscle rippling beneath the pale yet now healthy, creamy white skin of his chest, abdomen, and thighs.  He clenched his fists and examined his arms as he flexed them, feeling the superhuman demonic strength in them restored.  To his further delight, his hips felt broad and powerful again, capable of thrusting between a woman’s thighs with great rutting force.  Like the rest of his body, his cock and balls had withered away, but they now hung between his thighs fully restored as well.   Flaccid, his cock reached a length of nearly nine inches.  At full erection, he would easily be longer than twelve, longer and thicker than Byakuya and even _Sesshomaru_.  Together in their hairless sac, his balls were the size of a healthy grapefruit, rapidly producing their reproductive contents by their resumed function.

            “Excellent,” Naraku whispered to Sayaka.  He inhaled and exhaled deeply through his nose, able to breathe without pain and able to smell for the first time in weeks.  His sex drive returned to him with full force and arousal began to flow in his purified blood.  “Simply excellent.  Impressive, in fact.  You are strong to have survived the draining.  There are some who didn’t.”  Still riding the high of the miko’s reiki purification, every passing heartbeat was a burst of pure pleasure for him.  Sayaka hung limply in his tentacles’ hold and he lifted her head with a hand so that he could look upon her lovely face again.

            Sayaka’s golden eyes widened and she whimpered in weak protest as Naraku used his demonic flesh tendrils to draw her in close, pressing her bare body up against his.  He mated their hips, stomachs, and chests to one another, her full breasts melding intimately against the broad, heavily-muscled panes of his pectorals.  He slipped one hand behind her neck and used the other to grip one half of her perfect ass, squeezing her ample womanly flesh playfully as he took her mouth with his in a savage kiss.  The advanced state of his illness when he appeared before her had robbed him of most of his senses.  Now, he had those senses back, allowing him enjoy the warmth and scent of the beautiful miko’s body, the sleekness of her skin, and the taste and texture of her lips.  That she smelled and tasted of several other males’ cum only made more delicious to him.  She seemed to have a taste for the stuff and he decided that he would provide her with his own…in vastly larger quantities!

**(Soundtrack: Darkane – Bound)**

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOmSXyd6buc>

            The bath house’s namesake bath, a square of wooden ledges built over one of Japan’s many _onsen_ , naturally-formed hot springs, lay just a few feet behind Naraku and he backed up to step down into the steamy hot water, bringing Sayaka with him.  He adjusted his tentacles to hold her so that she stood knee deep in the bath’s water, her arms held directly above her head with wrists bound together.  He brought her other priestesses inside as well, lining them up neatly upon one of the house’s wooden walls and placing them in the same position as their mistress; he would deal with them shortly.  Next, he extended a hand out the house’s open door, aiming his open palm at Byakuya as his incarnation lay wounded and unconscious on the ground outside.

            Byakuya stirred with a groan as he felt his body lift off the ground, moved by the invisible force of Naraku’s telekinesis.  Naraku summoned the male wind demon’s chest to his palm, feeding his youki into the core of his being.  By the infusion of demonic energy directly into his heart, Byakuya woke instantly and opened his cobalt eyes to find himself floating in mid-air before his master.   “My lord, I’m…I’m sorry,” he apologized.  “I allowed the priestess to overwhelm me.”

            “All is well, my lovely Byakuya.  I have what I need,” Naraku soothed.  The energy he transmitted into Byakuya’s body began to regenerate the portions of his leg and arm that Sayaka had destroyed.  The cauterized ends of his limbs reopened and new bones and cartilage joints materialized where the old ones had been, followed by new muscles, tendons, blood vessels, freshly-grown skin, and finally, the parts of his clothing that had been vaporized, as well.

            Naraku set Byakuya down onto his feet and the wind demon found that his new leg and arm worked as just as well as the old.  The oni lord then beckoned his incarnation further into the bath; Byakuya complied with some trepidation and Naraku’s telekinesis slid the bath house’s doors shut behind him, sealing the two demons inside with ten beautiful, frightened human women.  Outside the house, Naraku’s demonic aura enveloped the entire structure; nothing could enter or leave unless he permitted it.

            Byakuya looked over the nine mikos that Naraku held up against the bath’s wall, then to Sayaka.  By the fearful expression on each woman’s face, he could tell that they certainly had an idea of what about to happen to them, but he wondered: would there be enough time for his creator to ‘play?’  He sensed the spike in his master’s aura and voiced his concern.  “Naraku-sama, you’ve stopped masking your aura.  InuYasha and Sesshomaru will certainly sense you now.”

            “That is true,” Naraku agreed.  “And they will definitely sense _this_.”

            The dark hanyou focused his demonic magic about his body and released it in a sudden burst that warped the very fabric of reality around him.  Pulsating red demon flesh, Naraku’s very essence   bubbled up from beneath the house’s floorboards and crawled up the walls, flowing around the bodies of Sayaka’s junior mikos and cementing them firmly to the wood.  The flesh also flowed around the lanterns in the house so as not to block out their light.  The horrible stuff worked its way further up into the house’s rafters to converge at the top of the ceiling.  Sealing the house completely, the flesh-covered walls emitted heat, moisture and demonic pheromones to transform the house into the sweltering, living womb of sexual evil itself.

            The seal of Naraku’s demon flesh cut off the onsen’s water source from below and huge, transparent veins, each with the circumference of a human arm, swelled out of the floor in a messy, crisscrossed pattern.  Their ends met in the bath’s square pool and the veins palpitated as they sucked the water out of the pool with the goal of replacing the water with something Naraku felt was much, much better.

            The bath house turned flesh chamber pulsed with a harsh, audible _ka-thwack_ , the sound of some massive, horrifying demonic organ of Naraku’s beginning to beat and pump its precious loads.  _Ka-thwack_.  _Ka-thwack_.  _Ka-thwack_.  The transparent veins in the floor instantly flooded over with pure, creamy white demonic semen, almost bursting with the sudden pressure.  The reproductive fluid was hot, thick and fresh, as if some enormous and spectacularly virile male monster had just ejaculated it.  Naraku smiled devilishly, hearing the mikos’ hearts beginning to speed up, perhaps from fear, perhaps from anticipation as they witnessed the sheer amounts of the potentially baby-making white stuff beginning to pump out of the floor veins into the emptied bath pool.  The pool filled up until Naraku and Sayaka stood knee-deep in 100-percent pure cum, gallons upon gallons of it sloshing around them and bearing demonic sperm in amounts measured in the _quadrillions_.  Suddenly, the earlier performance of the mikos’ male guests, hardly impotent as they were, paled in comparison.

            “InuYasha and Sesshomaru are hundreds of miles away,” Naraku stated confidently to Byakuya.  As he spoke, his cock filled out to full, foot-long-plus erection between his thighs in almost a single heartbeat, springing up to contact his muscular abdomen with a solid _thwap._ He readied himself for sex as a samurai warrior might unsheath his katana, though he was about to use a very different sort of ‘sword.’  By the pheromones in the air, Byakuya felt his own cock respond at the sight and he could smell the pussies of all ten priestesses flooding over involuntarily with female lubrication by the pheromones’ effect, as well.  Naraku continued: “Their packs will only travel as fast as their slowest member and at their best speed, they’ll need hours to reach this place.  They’ll be quite late, which means we have all the time we need to enjoy ourselves.  Why don’t you go ahead and get undressed?”

            Byakuya hesitated.  A strange pressure gathered into the front of his head, not quite a headache, but a signal that his brain was trying to do…something.  He had last felt it when Naraku’s most recent intake of reiki resulted in the gruesome death of the miko he drained it from.  Now, on this night, Naraku had explicitly stated to him that the two of them would perform a sexual act on at least Sayaka.  Given that Sayaka’s junior priestesses were present and all of them were as naked and aroused as she, Byakuya knew that Naraku would have him victimize them, as well. 

            Before, Byakuya had dutifully sought out powerful mikos for his master to drain of their reiki, as doing so was a matter of his master’s survival and therefore his own, even if it meant the miko’s death.  But now…Naraku would order him to _rape_ these women, to force himself upon them?  They were defenseless and frightened almost out of their minds.  And though Sayaka herself had tried to kill him rather mercilessly, he supposed that by trying to kill a demon like himself, she was simply doing what was natural for her, what she had probably spent most of her life training for.  After all, he _was_ trespassing on her property at a ridiculous time of night and he had even pleasured himself while he spied on her sexual ritual.   She had tried to kill him but he didn’t hate her for it.  She didn’t deserve _this_.  This was…this was _wrong_.

            Naraku saw the intense conflict upon Byakuya’s face and used his telepathy to analyze the wind demon’s thoughts.  “Yes, I see,” he said, understanding immediately.  “This is a first for you, isn’t it?  In all your years of service to me, you’ve never taken a woman or even touched one, let alone taken one against her will.  And because we are such ‘despicable’ youkai, these miko are most unwilling.”

            Byakuya winced as the pressure in his head returned, stronger and legitimately painful this time.  Every heartbeat was a burst of minor agony, now.  He reached up and pressed the fingertips of one hand to one side of his forehead, where the pressure was centered.  “My lord, something is wrong with me…”

            Naraku laughed knowingly.  “That _something_ is your conscience,” he revealed.  “Do you see, ladies?” he spoke to the terrified, yet increasingly aroused priestesses in his flesh chamber.  “A demon would feel concern for you.  He would even feel _guilt_ for you.”  Each miko, Sayaka included, set their eyes on Byakuya to gauge his suffering for themselves.  Sayaka herself felt pangs of regret stir within her.  Turning back to Byakuya, Naraku continued:  “When I created you, I suppressed the part of your brain most responsible for your conscience, that you would be a better servant to me.  Evidently, in this heated moment, it is now resurgent.”

            Naraku gestured for Byakuya to approach.  The wind demon did as his master ordered, not directly conflicted about that particular command and Naraku placed a hand over his head.  Through his hand, the oni lord directed his dark magic into his incarnation’s brain, seeking out his ‘conscience center’ and nullifying it again, if only temporarily.  An expression of relief crossed Byakuya’s face as the conflict that arose in him by his resurgent conscience disappeared completely.  Suddenly, he could not remember why he found his creator’s instructions objectionable and he would now obey without question.

            Naraku smiled as Byakuya began slipping out of his clothes.  Unburdened by conscience and buoyed by rising desire, the wind demon undressed with some ritual, relishing in the way Sayaka and her women couldn’t take their eyes off him as he made himself ready for them.  Releasing his hair from its high ponytail, he removed his vestment and haori, revealing his well-sculpted upper body to them.  A spider-shaped scar resulting from looked to have been third-degree burns spanned almost the entirety of his muscular back, just like Naraku’s.  It was a mark of his connection to his master.  When he slipped off his sandals and let his hakama fall away from his hips, the male wind demon’s cock jut from him at full, eleven-inch erection already, thick globs of pre-cum pumping out of him and dripping away onto the fleshy floor.  As Naraku had predicted, Byakuya’s balls had replenished all the seed that he had shot just minutes earlier.  For him, even without his ability to make duplicates of himself, flooding nine or ten empty pussies and the wombs at their end would not be impossible.

            Naraku roved his red eyes up and down the spectacularly-hung Byakuya’s exquisite male body with hedonistic approval.  After all, he had engineered it himself.  “Please the girls, first,” he ordered to his incarnation.  “I will attend to Sayaka-sensei _personally_.”

            Byakuya nodded to his master and did as he was told, hardly needing to be told a second time.  While the wind demon moved to busy himself with Sayaka’s nine young priestesses, Naraku waded through the pool of semen to advance on Sayaka herself, using his tentacles to spread her thighs far apart and bare her bald, beautiful pussy to him.  As her thighs spread up and away from each other, her lower legs rose from the pool and they gleamed with a dripping coat of cum much heavier and more complete than she could have hoped to get during any of her past bukkake rituals. 

            Sayaka fought as best she could to keep her thighs closed but as ever, the muscle in the demonic appendages wrapped around them was simply too strong.  Realizing the futility of her struggle, she relaxed as much as she was able and called out to her younger women.  “It’s okay, girls,” she reassured.  “Be brave, be strong.  They’re just like any other man, looking for pleasure.”

            Naraku chuckled deeply as he moved to stand directly between Sayaka’s open thighs, relishing in the heat of her body washing against his bare skin.  He willed tentacles like the ones growing from his back and holding Sayaka to grow from the fleshy ceiling above him and take hold of her, as well.  Securing her with this second set of horrifying demonic appendages, he retracted the ones in his back so that he could move his body independent of hers.  He used the new tentacles holding her to recline her before him, adding a few more to support her head so that she could watch him join their bodies without straining her neck.  “Make no mistake, miko,” he said.  He gestured to his inhumanly sized cock and balls as they pulsed between his thighs.  “My incarnation and I are like no male _you’ve_ ever seen.” 

            The oni lord added a few more examples of his inhuman appendages to the mix, very thin and flexible ones that coiled around Sayaka’s generous breasts to squeeze them and tease at her rosy nipples until they stood totally erect.  The ends of them swelled and transformed into tiny, slit-like mouths to take her nipples inside with a slick, quiet _suck-suck_.   Finally, Naraku sent two more tendrils like the ones holding and suckling her breasts to attach to the silky petals of her pussy and pull them far apart, exposing her vibrant pink vaginal interior to his lusty gaze.   

            With flushed cheeks and gimlet golden eyes, Sayaka glared up at Naraku with a mixture of intense sexual stimulation and restrained anger, only provoking a smile from him.  “Come, now.  Don’t tell me you’re not excited for this or that this will somehow defile you,” Naraku chided.  “You were reeking of cum before I even arrived here.”

            Naraku brandished his massive cock to Sayaka as a living weapon, fisting it slowly from its pulsing crown all the way down to its hairless base and back up, over and over.  It jerked visibly in his hand with every explosive beat of his rejuvenated demon heart.  Pre-cum pulsed forth from it in such amounts that it ran freely over his fist to lubricate its full length for his easy pleasure.  Breathing deep and husky, he pressed his cock’s bloated, glistening head to Sayaka’s weeping pussy as his tentacles held it open and he just held himself there, relishing in the sight of her big breasts heaving in and out by her own rapid breathing and the sound of her heart’s galloping beat as he prepared to take her.

            The demon lord simply teased the elder miko for a bit, rubbing his swollen cockhead up and down her dripping female slit, brushing it over the elegantly hooded pearl of her clit to drive her wild.  After a few silent, heated moments, Sayaka spoke with a sneer.  “Well?  What are you waiting for?” she demanded of Naraku.  She couldn’t escape the situation but she refused to beg the dark hanyou to spare her and her women.  She knew that he wouldn’t even if she did.  Instead, she resolved that she and her priestesses would indulge themselves in a good, hard fuck that she decided they needed anyway as she regained her reiki and prepared to retaliate.  “You big-dicked demon _fuck!_   Do me, already!”

            Naraku grinned widely and gave a laugh.  “ _Good girl_.  I knew you’d come around,” he cooed to Sayaka as he began to ease forward into her, using his hips to increase the pressure behind his cock gradually, as if he was concerned with causing her pain.  Her pussy’s outer mouth spread wide around his cock’s broad male crown and swallowed it inside with a silent, well-lubricated _pop_.  From there, he gave his full length to her in a long, slow and utterly deliberate stroke, and both he and she crooned aloud as their bodies became one.

            His own cock throbbing hard and his balls drawn up tight to his body, Byakuya approached Sayaka’s nine young, naked priestesses.  They were still glued to the bath house wall by Naraku’s demon flesh and so he moved with careful steps so as to not frighten them further.  He could hear each woman’s heart hammering in her chest and he reached out to stroke one’s face, cupping it gingerly to admire her youthful beauty.  “Please, don’t be afraid.  I will make you feel _good_ ,” he hushed softly to the trembling miko, reaching down to lift one of her feet off of the floor and spread her thigh away from the other to make room for his muscular hips. 

            Byakuya had no true sexual experience of his own, but in his breeding heat, he had demonic instinct and knowledge inherited from his creator.  In his mind’s eye he could see all of his master’s prior sexual conquests laid out before him.  Now, he would use that knowledge himself for the first time.  He guided his big cock to the entrance of the young miko’s sex, feeling her body’s creamy liquid lubrication flowing freely over its thick head, and slipped up into her with a passionate groan.

            Though he had seen her pleasure several males with her mouth and hands, the first young woman that Byakuya set himself upon had never taken a male within her before and so the wind demon gasped in surprise when he felt her maidenhead resist him.  Lining himself up just right, he looked into her wide, frightened eyes and made an apology to her.  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered solemnly, snapping his hips forward to drive his cock deep inside her and break through her virginal barrier in one precise, penetrating stroke.  He winced by a combination of her keening cry and sobs of pain, her incredible heat and tightness, and the scent of her virginal blood.  Though Naraku had altered the function of Byakuya’s conscience so that he would not shy from committing rape, Byakuya could still empathize somewhat, regretting that he caused his victim anything but the pleasure he promised.  He closed his eyes, kissing the miko’s forehead as if to soothe her and held still to let her adjust.

            Eight of Sayaka’s women remained unattended, so while Byakuya let his first victim get used to the feel of his immense, pulsing length inside her, he used his demonic power to make eight copies of himself and direct them to violate the other priestesses.  Each copy was as well-endowed and feverishly aroused as the original.  Each took his place before his respective woman, spread her thighs wide and buried his steely maleness inside them to elicit from them a breathtaking assortment of soft female cries, gasps and moans.  To Byakuya’s curiosity and relief, only three of the other eight women possessed maidenheads like the first, though it was clear to him that none had ever taken a male as large as himself before.  Together, the nine Byakuyas began to rock in and out of their women slowly and experimentally, adding hard, pulsating inches of themselves to their rhythmic advance and retreat one inch at a time, working the women’s bodies into familiarity with their own.  Soon, by the women’s pheromone-induced lubrication, the male wind demons were going balls deep in them on every thrust, pumping their huge cocks firmly against the mouth of each woman’s womb to reap powerful bursts of incredible pleasure and give them in return.

            Meanwhile, Naraku pumped long and deep into Sayaka, savoring the sensation of her sopping cunt gliding back and forth along his twelve-plus inches with well-lubricated ease.  She was so snug around him that he could feel her heart beating through her vagina’s slick female interior as it gripped and milked at his cock’s every ridge and vein.  Using his dark magic, he changed the speed of his own heartbeat to match hers so that her inner walls pulsed inward and his cock pulsed outward at the exact same moment, taking the primal intimacy of their fast, brutal joining to new, dizzying heights. 

            With flushed cheeks and teary golden eyes, Sayaka looked down between her gently jiggling breasts, gazing distantly at her hairless pussy as Naraku’s monstrous male organ sawed in and out of it with a soft, squelching _gush, gush, gush_.  Given his great length, her cervix proved to be an easy target for him, a glistening pink bullseye of uniquely female tissue deep inside her that he plowed his cock’s broad crown against over and over with perfect accuracy.  His thrusts were quick and powerful and her cervix trembled under the coital strain, her womb trembling behind it as an undeniable orgasm built within her very blood.  When she felt his heart beginning to beat in time with hers, an intense, repeating jolt of circulatory sensation that seized the full depth of her cunt at once, her mouth fell agape and she looked up into his evil red eyes.  There, she saw wild male triumph burning brightly and she couldn’t help herself as she came hard, shattering into female climax for him to feel.

            As Naraku threw Sayaka deep into her female pleasure, the original Byakuya felt the pressure of male orgasm building up within him, even more powerfully than when he had relieved himself with his hand.  The feel of his miko victim’s hot, creaming wet pussy flesh flowing up and down his cock got him bigger and harder than he’d ever been before.  The subtle pressure of her womb resisting him, cupping against him deep inside her on every rising thrust had him struggling for breath.  Beyond the physical sensations, he felt as if his body knew on some primal, instinctive level that it was about to unleash its seed inside the body of a real woman, causing his most male tissues, muscles and organs to work harder than ever before in preparation for the final, inseminating act.  His balls felt full to the point of overflowing and his prostate beat as a second heart at the root of his cock as he pumped harder and faster into the hot, gripping core of the miko before him, taking himself over the edge. 

            Before, when he jacked himself off to the sight of Sayaka’s sexual ritual, Byakuya merely groaned as he came.  Now, as he thrust with wild, rutting abandon within a real woman’s body, he tossed his head back and _snarled_ with clenched teeth, closing his eyes as orgasm took him harder, more completely than any time he used his hand.  Massive loads of his hot, creamy cum seared out of his balls and up his cock to burst out of his cock’s throbbing crown and _slam_ into the first young miko’s quivering cervix.  The first few of these highly potent spurts ‘merely’ drenched her womb’s mouth, splattering hot and messy against nearby pussy flesh, but when Byakuya sheathed himself completely within her, mating his cock’s gushing head to her cervix and using every fiber of discipline in his body to hold himself there, his next few loads surged clean through and erupted directly into her womb.  The sensation of boiling hot demon seed flooding, _fountaining_ into the deepest part of her sent the lovely miko completely over the top into a climax of her own, and the richly textured orgasmic contractions of her pussy milked Byakuya for all he could give.

            The other Byakuyas reached similarly powerful orgasms within the other women, as well, flooding their wombs and then their pussies in just a few shots.  Still thrusting within Sayaka as her inner flesh fluttered around him, Naraku closed his red eyes and used his extrasensory demonic perception to look deep into the body of the first junior priestess Byakuya took, focusing in on her flat lower belly. There, Byakuya’s cock occupied the full depth of the girl’s pussy, a column of hard male flesh throbbing visibly against walls of luscious female tissue by every heartbeat and ejaculation pumping through it.  Naraku could see great, surging jets of his incarnation’s seed bursting out of his cock and lancing straight into the girl’s womb, painting the healthy, sexy pink interior of her body’s most feminine chamber a uniquely reproductive shade of thick, creamy white.

            Byakuya was shooting so much and the seal of the girl’s pussy around him was so perfect that the male wind demon’s seed had nowhere to go but _up_ , ever deeper into her body.  With immense vicarious pleasure, Naraku watched the tide of Byakuya’s hot male fluid work its way into her the girl’s fallopian tubes and crash right into her ovaries.  At that moment, her entire reproductive tract was awash with his cream.  What happened next stole Naraku’s breath completely.

            When Byakuya came inside her, one of the young miko’s eggs was already present in her womb, floating freely in its fluid medium.  A few healthy female heartbeats later, it was suddenly lost in a sea of cum, assaulted from every possible angle by hundreds, even thousands out of the billions of extremely powerful wind demon sperm unleashed within her.  One lucky little swimming cell thrust through the egg’s outer membrane and fused with its nucleus to ignite new life in a pulse of energy that _everyone_ present could feel.  Byakuya gave up an almost bestial shout of ultimate triumph and his freshly-impregnated victim cried out helplessly as both he and she felt the exact moment of conception for themselves.

            Sayaka’s eyes grew wide as through her miko senses, she felt the lives of some horrible demon spawn begin inside of her young women.  She hadn’t anticipated _this_. “No!  _No!_ ” she cried in denial, even as her orgasm continued unabated.

            Naraku’s watched and listened as the nine Byakuyas impregnated the mikos, one after another until all nine women had conceived.  Sayaka’s cry was muted and distant in his ears as he began to laugh heartily with total mania, immediately grasping the significance of what had just happened.  It wasn’t merely that the women were fertile in this moment, it was that his Byakuya, his incarnation, was _virile!_  

            Naraku himself, as an amalgamation of dozens of different demons on top of a single human, carried no definitive genetic information of his own.  The sperm in the pool of semen in which he stood were blank and completely sterile.  Byakuya, however, was a pure wind demon, like Kagura before him.  Naraku had created him in this way, though not with the intention of having him sire offspring.  The oni lord had made his incarnation pure so as to ensure a more even, predictable and useful servant.  Earlier detachments of his, such as Kageromaru, Muso, and Hakudoshi were of mixed composition and were almost totally uncontrollable.  His ‘pure’ ones from the same period, Kagura and Kanna, were much less so.  Therefore, Naraku made Byakuya to be pure and that the male wind demon proved able to create life with a woman thrilled Naraku to no end.

            As the nine Byakuyas and their women came down from their orgasmic highs, Naraku pulled out of Sayaka’s pussy abruptly without reaching a climax of his own.  He reasoned that if Byakuya could impregnate nine out of nine junior priestesses within mere seconds, he could certainly do it to Sayaka herself.  To him, she smelled especially fertile.  Therefore, he refrained from coming inside the elder miko so that his own seed, sterile as it was, would not interfere with that of his incarnation.  “Very good, Byakuya.  You’ve proven your virility,” he spoke.  Moving in the semen pool, he stepped around behind Sayaka to grasp her by the undersides of her widely-spread thighs and bring her back against his hard chest, grinding his pussy-soaked cock against her rear.  Nuzzling at one of her rounded human ears from behind, he spoke his next command:  “Now, come give this bitch your child, as well…”

 

**-To be continued-**


	6. Desecration of a Shrine, Destruction of a Village - pt. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naraku and Byakuya violate Sayaka together.  Sayaka becomes pregnant by Byakuya.  Naraku brutally murders Sayaka's junior priestesses, destroys the village outside her shrine, then implants a horrifying surprise into the bodies of the dead, for InuYasha and his pack to find when they arrive on the scene.  Pairings: Naraku/Sayaka/Byakuya (NC).

 

**(Continued from pt. 2)**

            As the nine Byakuyas and their women came down from their orgasmic highs, Naraku pulled out of Sayaka’s pussy abruptly without reaching a climax of his own.  He reasoned that if Byakuya could impregnate nine out of nine junior priestesses within mere seconds, he could certainly do it to Sayaka herself.  To him, she smelled especially fertile.  Therefore, he refrained from coming inside the elder miko so that his own seed, sterile as it was, would not interfere with that of his incarnation.  “Very good, Byakuya.  You’ve proven your virility,” he spoke.  Moving in the semen pool, he stepped around behind Sayaka to grasp her by the undersides of her widely-spread thighs and bring her back against his hard chest, grinding his pussy-soaked cock against her rear.  Nuzzling at one of her rounded human ears from behind, he spoke his next command:  “Now, come give this bitch your child, as well…”

**(Soundtrack: Darkane – Imaginary Entity)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFoMRDzQbFY** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFoMRDzQbFY)

            Reluctantly, the nine Byakuyas pulled out of the women they were sheathed within, their cocks backing out from their snug, sucking pussies inch by inch until they separated with a wet _pop_.  Hot, creamy cum came draining out of the young mikos immediately, dripping onto the floor of Naraku’s demonic flesh between their feet and running thickly down their inner legs.  The women hung their heads and sagged limply in well-fucked exhaustion, prevented from collapsing outright by the demonic flesh cementing them to the bath house wall.

            Byakuya dissolved his copies and turned away from the priestesses before him to face Naraku and Sayaka.  Naraku had commanded him to impregnate the elder miko as he did her juniors and now he would do exactly that.  He stepped down into the pool of semen his master had made, feeling the creamy liquid simply _squishing_ around his toes, and waded forward until he stood between Sayaka’s thighs as Naraku’s tentacles held them open.

            Naraku slid his hands up and down Sayaka’s thighs to stroke her taut, creamy flesh.  “Look at this body, Byakuya,” he said to his incarnation.  He removed his tentacles from one of the miko’s large breasts so that he could hold it in one of his hands, feeling its size, weight and warmth.  “Have you ever seen one so full, so ample?  By Kami, these _tits!_   _This_ …this is a _woman’s_ body, nothing like those girls you just bred.  Touch her.  Feel her for yourself!”

            Byakuya reached up and replaced his master’s hands with his own, placing one under one of Sayaka’s shapely thighs, the other on her now tentacle-free breast.  He squeezed and stroked experimentally, feeling her warm, smooth flesh give under his fingertips and feeling her quiver by his touch.  The elder miko kept her face turned away from him and Naraku fisted a hand in her short, silky black hair, jerking her head sharply so that she looked directly at Byakuya again.  “Kiss her,” the oni lord ordered.  “As appropriate for a priestess of her rank, she tastes…simply divine.”

            Naraku’s handsome incarnation looked directly into Sayaka’s alluring golden eyes.  The bloodthirsty hatred he saw there when she made ready to kill him earlier had disappeared, replaced by fear, shame and arousal as she came down from the orgasm Naraku had forced upon her.  Now, he would force _himself_ upon her.  Gingerly, he closed the distance between their mouths, brushing his nose past hers as he took her lips with his own.  The beautiful priestess tensed between him and Naraku, sandwiched between their hard and extremely powerful demonic male bodies, and cried out softly into his kiss.

            Byakuya seized upon Sayaka’s cry to push his tongue past her lips and into her mouth.  Besides what remained of all the human seed she had swallowed earlier, the wind demon could _taste_ her reiki interacting with his own youki in their shared saliva as he worked his tongue against hers.  The sensation was thoroughly electric, like a million tiny points of light dancing back and forth between his tongue and hers.  He drank his kiss from her lips for a few moments more, then pulled away to leave her panting softly.

            Trembling by the sheer stimulation of being soaked in cum, wrapped in hot, pulsating tentacles and trapped between two well-endowed, highly aroused demon males, Sayaka watched Byakuya reach down between their perspiring bodies to take hold of his cock.  Even after filling her younger women up to the point of almost instant impregnation, his demonic sexual constitution caused him to soften only slightly in the meantime.  The coat of lubrication he still bore, a mixture of a young priestess’ hot, milky pussy cream and his own seed, allowed him to stroke himself back to full, pulsating erection very quickly.  Sayaka gasped as Byakuya pressed his cock’s massive crown to her cunt, feeling a male’s heart beating against her most private flesh for the second time that night.  To her, he felt as big as Naraku and her pussy still throbbed by the ruthless spearing the oni lord had given it.

            “I guess I deserve this, being raped like the cock-sucking whore I am,” Sayaka mused bitterly to Byakuya, hoping that the wind demon might spare her even though she had legitimately tried to kill him less than half an hour before.  Then, she would have acted as a merciless, demon-slaying bitch to him and she would have killed him even if he had pleaded for his life.  Therefore, she knew that she probably wouldn’t receive any mercy from him now, but still she hoped.  The idea hadn’t occurred to her before, given that she and Byakuya were of different species, but she now knew that if he entered her and fucked her until he came inside her, she would almost certainly become pregnant.  Nearing her thirties, she was far older than most first-time mothers of her time, and she had never really thought about having children.  She certainly hadn’t thought of having a child sired by one of her supposed natural enemies.  Now, the moment was upon her and she felt only fear.

            “You’re no whore.  You’re…an _entrepreneur_.  A valuable part of your community,” Byakuya comforted to Sayaka.  He said this as he rubbed the head of his cock up and down her wet slit, feeling himself swelling to maximum size and hardness by the hot, smoothly lubricated sensation as well as the mere prospect of giving her his child.  When she spoke to him of being a ‘whore,’ a pang of guilt entered his heart and the pressure in his head flared up slightly.  Raping and impregnating the other women had weakened Naraku’s block on his conscience and now that he made ready to take Sayaka herself, the look in her eyes and the defeated tone in her voice caused it to weaken further. 

            Still, Byakuya began to press his cock into Sayaka, feeling the silky petals of her pussy spreading wide to accept his cock’s thick head.  “Please, forgive me!” he whispered hotly to the miko beauty before him as he surged his hips forward to bury himself in her completely.

            Behind Sayaka, Naraku smiled in approval as Byakuya went balls deep in the lovely Shinto bukkake queen right from the start.  They gave up a lovely cry of male and female pleasure combined as their bodies became one.  The evil oni lord then took his own cock in hand and pressed its thick head to the clean, pink flesh of Sayaka’s ‘other’ hole, much to her fright.  “Now, hold very still, love,” Naraku purred to her as he began to enter her ass, sliding into it one thick, throbbing inch at a time.

            Sayaka shook and struggled helplessly, crying out as her anal passage filled up with Naraku’s monster cock.  Byakuya alone was already so hard and huge within her cunt and for his master to try and force himself up her tiny female ‘backdoor’ at the same time made her feel as if she was about to tear in half.  Naraku was well lubricated with a coat of her vaginal fluids but the gripping tightness of her ass and his sheer size made the going excruciatingly slow. 

            Byakuya fought to keep himself still by the incredible pleasure assaulting him.  Sayaka’s pussy rippled and milked around him with breathtaking heat and texture, twitching in time with the beat of her heart, and her cervix cupped over his cock’s big head perfectly, reacting to the taste of his pre-cum to spasm open and closed over and over.  The very center of her womanhood lay bare to him.  Then, as Naraku entered Sayaka’s ass from behind, the male wind demon could feel his master’s phallus sliding up alongside his own, their steely lengths separated only by a thin wall of the miko’s most secret female tissues.  With a cock as big as Naraku’s filling Sayaka’s ass, Byakuya felt the miko’s pussy become even tighter around him, amplifying the sensations to the point that he simply could not stand to hold still any longer.

            Breathing harsh and husky by the forbidden, very nearly painful pleasure of taking two such well-endowed men at once, Sayaka gazed distantly up at the fleshy ceiling of the demon-possessed bath house, her golden eyes unfocused and clouded with tears as Naraku and Byakuya began to move within her.  The male wind demon backed out of her cunt by a single, experimental inch and slid back in, shuddering by the pleasure it caused for him.  Naraku gave a short stroke into her ass, timing his thrust with Byakuya’s so that the two of them moved in and out of the miko’s body at the same time.  Soon, they found their rhythm and their pumping became longer, faster, harder as they began to fuck Sayaka in earnest, their cocks striking deep at her colon and cervix at once in a ruthless, two-pronged assault.

            Earlier, Naraku had denied himself release while using Sayaka’s pussy, but the miko’s ass felt just as good and now he could feel the pulsating, ejaculatory pressure of male orgasm building rapidly within him again.  This time, he wouldn’t stop or pull out.  To accentuate his own pleasure, he willed a new tentacle to grow from the fleshy ceiling directly above Sayaka’s head, one unlike the glossy black ones restraining her body as living ropes.  Decidedly phallic by the broad, mushroomed head at the end, it was as a very long, flexible version of his own cock, constituted of reddish-pink, semi-transparent matter so that he, Byakuya and Sayaka together could see the creamy white cum pumping through its inner channel when his orgasm came.

            Sayaka recoiled at the sight of Naraku’s latest horrifying creation descending from the ceiling above her head.  The thing was at least four feet long and seemed to slither out of its gooey aperture as some kind of especially evil-looking snake.  Naraku grasped the miko’s head by her hair and with considerable force, tilted it back so that her mouth and throat were lined up for his transparent tentacle cock’s entry.  Squeezing her eyes shut, Sayaka felt the wriggling tentacle position its broad head at her lips, its thoroughly masculine scent filling her nose.  She opened her mouth to scream and Naraku shoved his inhuman appendage deep into it, plunging it down her throat, past her gullet and into her very esophagus.  Her scream became as a muffled gurgle.

            Pumping his cock in and out of her sopping cunt all the while, Byakuya winced at the sight of Sayaka’s throat stretching to accommodate the massive demonic phallus raping it, stretched out from her chin all the way down to the hollow of her collarbone.  Naraku was violating her very _chest cavity_.  Glancing at her neck, the wind demon could see the priestess’ larynx and carotid artery squeezed tight against her skin from the inside, her artery beating visibly by her rapid, audible pulse.  Naraku then pulled his meaty tentacle cock out until its crown emerged from Sayaka’s widely-stretched lips, letting her breathe just enough so that she could stay conscious, and slammed it right back down her throat.

            This was the brutal rhythm Naraku set: as he and Byakuya thrust up into Sayaka’s ass and pussy, Naraku pulled his tentacle out of her mouth, letting her inhale.  When he and his incarnation pulled out on their backstrokes, he shoved his tentacle back down her throat, so far down that he could feel it battering her heart and lungs aside by its girth on its way to her stomach.  Finally, the heinous oni lord pulled his demon phallus out so that Sayaka could _exhale_ and he began the terrible process all over again.  One throbbing demon cock thrust in perfect counterpoint to two others inside one woman’s body, and what had once been an ordinary Japanese bath house filled with the sounds of the most hideous sexual defilement Japan had ever seen, or perhaps might _ever_ see.  _Gush.  Slurp.  Gurgle._

            Sayaka’s nine younger priestesses, whimpering and weeping as they hung limply from the flesh wall in the aftermath of their forcible impregnation by Byakuya and his copies, went unattended all this time.  Naraku decided to include those women in the ‘fun’ and directed a series of new tentacle cocks, each exactly like the one fucking Sayaka’s face, to sprout from the flesh walls around them.  There were twenty-seven of them in all, three for each woman, and they surged forward to fill an empty pussy, ass or mouth as needed.  These new tentacles were not gentle and they speared into the girls’ unsuspecting bodies regardless of how badly it hurt them.

            Byakuya felt his head positively spinning as orgasm began to take him.  The choking sounds of Sayaka’s young mikos as Naraku began to fuck them were flat and muted in his ears, drowned out by the pounding beat of his heart.  His big wind demon balls drew up tight to his body and he hammered his swelling, arching cock away at Sayaka’s cervix, pumping through her hot, grasping pussy flesh to take himself over the edge.  He closed his cobalt blue eyes as jet after jet of hot, creamy cum seared up his cock and burst out of it directly into Sayaka’s hungry womb, absolutely flooding it with extremely potent wind demon sperm that immediately began to seek the precious jewel of her egg.

            Inside Sayaka’s body, Naraku felt Byakuya’s cock jerking and twitching against his own by the ejaculations pumping through it and he allowed his own release to come.  His own cock grew even bigger and harder in the miko’s ass and quivered for a single moment before a positively volcanic eruption of cum finished the journey that had begun deep in his highly-productive demon balls.  He hissed aloud and his muscles clenched beneath his pale skin as hot, thick semen exploded out of him in a series of spewing bolts that slammed right up against Sayaka’s colon, drenching it and filling her brutalized passage with boiling liquid heat.

            The bath house turned demonic rape chamber gave another terrible _ka-thwack, ka-thwack_ as cum began moving through the veins in the walls and floor again.  The walls were extensions of Naraku’s body and Naraku was coming _hard_.  The oni lord’s thick white cream entered the tentacle cocks filling Sayaka’s mouth and the holes of her younger women, flowing closer and closer to their bodies in a rhythmic ebb and flow of pressure.  The transparent tentacles were as living, utterly horrifying thermometers, each a visual indicator of how close each woman was to receiving the ultimate internal cumshot. 

            Sayaka’s junior mikos screamed into the tentacles in their mouths as Naraku’s creamy seed burst out into their pussies and asses and shot down their throats.  Sayaka herself watched the thick white load coursing through the tentacle in her own mouth and she too screamed, her scream coming as a hopeless, helpless gurgle as hot demon cum spewed out into her throat and stomach.  Naraku relished in her suffering, the sound of her gulping frantically to keep up with the rapid flow he gave her.  He pressed a hand to her belly, directly over her womb, and waited for the moment when Byakuya’s seed found its mark.

            Naraku didn’t have to wait long.  Like the other women, Sayaka already had an egg waiting in her womb and Byakuya’s seed found it quickly, fertilizing it without mercy.  By her great spiritual energy and Byakuya’s, the ignition of life force in her belly dwarfed those of the elder miko’s other, less gifted women: the child it would grow into promised to be _powerful!_   Naraku decided that Sayaka’s strong reiki for purifying his body’s corruption and her newly-minted pregnancy made her valuable to him, to say nothing of her beauty and sexual applications.  He would use her reiki for survival and assuming she lived long enough to actually give birth to Byakuya’s child, he could use the child for other, decidedly nefarious purposes.  However, her younger women, with their less developed bodies and weaker pregnancies, were much less valuable and Naraku did not feel inclined to take them with him.  They were witnesses to his presence.  He could not allow them to live.

            By Naraku’s will, the tentacle cocks in the young mikos’ mouths pulled out suddenly, having pumped whole pints of cum down into their stomachs and the women took gasping breaths of desperately needed air.  They began to vomit pure cum immediately, coughing it up in heavy, projectile-like wads, but before they could empty their stomachs or catch their breaths completely, the tentacles rammed back down into them, entering not their esophagi, but their _tracheas._   The tentacle cocks reached deep down the girls’ windpipes to plant their broad, spewing heads in the spot where their windpipes branched out into their lungs’ bronchial tubes, and proceeded to pump their lungs full of cum.

            Naraku pulled the tentacle cock in Sayaka’s mouth out to let her breathe as her junior mikos drowned in his seed.  The horrible thing continued to spew unabated, flailing around to ejaculate all over him, Byakuya and Sayaka, drenching every inch of their bodies and hair with hot, white reproductive fluid.  Sayaka coughed desperately, hacking up semen all over Byakuya’s face and chest even as the stuff rained down on her from above, and she caught sight of her young women as the life left their bodies.

            “No…God, _no!_ ” Sayaka mouthed, realizing what Naraku was doing to her girls.  He was killing them with his _cum_.  “Stop!  _Please!”_

            “You are useful.  They are much less so,” Naraku replied coldly to Sayaka, grasping her head so that she couldn’t look away from her dying women.  “Now, watch.”

            The young mikos’ chests puffed out, their breasts rising in unison as if they were each taking a long, deep breath.  In a sense, they _were_ as the semen pumping into their lungs began to pressurize by the sheer force and volume with which Naraku shot it.  Using his demonic telepathy, Naraku shared all nine girls’ experiences and thoughts with Sayaka, letting the elder miko _feel_ them die.  Sayaka shook and screamed wordlessly by the thoughts and emotions the sadistic oni lord force-fed into her mind; suddenly she could feel and see _everything_ , seeing the color draining from her girls’ vision, hearing their silent, mental screams of terror, hearing their hearts beating faster and faster, reaching a lethal, asphyxiating crescendo before suddenly beginning to slow down…

            One after one, the young mikos' hearts slowed down and stopped, the only movement in their chests now being the continued throbbing of Naraku's ejaculating tentacles.  Sayaka’s sensory overload ceased as her girls reached full brain death; there simply wasn’t anything left in their heads for Naraku to relay to her anymore.  The beacons of life force surrounding the eggs that Byakuya had fertilized in the women’s bellies dissipated by their deaths, new life snuffed out as soon as it had come into existence. 

            Naraku reveled in the horror of the girls’ last moments, relishing in the unforgettable way the lifelight left their tear-filled eyes.  He then imagined doing the same thing to Kagome or any of InuYasha’s other women, preferably while InuYasha watched.  Indulging in his psychotic fantasies and the blood-curdling reality before him, he thrust himself within Sayaka’s ass savagely until he reached orgasm again, thick globs of semen trailing down his cock as he filled her ass to overflowing.

            In the deathly silence and stillness that resulted, Sayaka wept, sobbing in uncontrollable grief for her murdered friends, her mind reeling from shock.  Naraku then gripped her throat from behind with both hands, squeezing just hard enough to cut off her airflow.  By the oxygen deprivation and sheer physical and emotional stress, she lost consciousness quickly and sagged limply in his flesh tendrils’ hold.

            His body restored and his inhuman sexuality sated for the time being, Naraku pulled out of Sayaka’s ass and willed the tentacles holding her to release her.  A flood of cum pent up inside her by his cock came pouring out of her after him and she collapsed into Byakuya’s arms.  To the oni lord’s surprise, Byakuya collapsed as well, the strength in his knees seeming to vanish as he and Sayaka sank into the pool of Naraku’s cum.  Weakly, Byakuya held Sayaka to his chest and slumped backward to sit against the edge of the semen pool, his breathing harsh and unsteady as the unconscious Sayaka sat draped over him.  With curiosity, Naraku reached down to turn the wind demon’s cum-drenched face to him and look into his eyes.  There, for the first time, Naraku saw _hatred_.

            “You…you _killed_ them,” Byakuya whispered to his master, disbelieving the lengths to which Naraku would go in the name of sexual pleasure alone.  By his master’s murder of Sayaka’s priestesses, the ‘block’ on his brain’s conscience center had failed completely and the wind demon felt himself assaulted by a host of new, unfamiliar emotions.  Never before had he felt such a way.  Guilt, fear, and anger roiled him: guilt for his role in the night’s events and the things he himself had done to Sayaka and her women, fear for what lay ahead for him, especially in the next world, and finally, anger for the utter callousness of his ‘master,’ his ‘creator,’ his ‘lord.’  “ _You killed them!”_

            Byakuya lifted Sayaka off him, separating himself from her carefully and laying her back against the edge of the semen pool.  Then, without another thought, he turned and lunged viciously at Naraku.  He took his master down into the pool of semen, submerging him completely in the vile white fluid, and began to strike through it at his master’s handsome, yet hideous face with one hard fist after another.  Outwardly, the two nude males appeared to be well matched, being of similar height, weight and build, but Naraku’s body concealed vastly more strength.  Naraku simply lay beneath Byakuya and allowed him to beat him, contemplating the significance of the moment.  Byakuya, his most loyal incarnation yet, was trying to kill him with his bare hands.  He would need time to consider the future ramifications and what actions he would take, but for the moment, he had to subdue the enraged wind demon male, even if he posed little actual threat.

            Naraku seized Byakuya by his throat with a single hand and rose up beneath him, emerging from the semen pool completely soaked in the stuff.  The tremendous muscle in his cum-coated arm flexed precisely as he lifted the wind demon up and off his feet, out of the semen pool completely, and slammed him down into the flesh chamber floor outside the pool with such power that the wood planking hidden underneath shattered.  “You’re not thinking clearly.  You mustn’t be, to try something so _foolish_ ,” Naraku spoke coolly to Byakuya, even as semen dripped from his face and his silky black bangs.  He summoned his flesh tendrils to restrain his incarnation’s arms and legs as he continued to fight against him.  “We will speak of this later…and you will not enjoy the conversation.” 

            Naraku clamped his hand down into Byakuya’s throat, cutting off his airflow as he had Sayaka’s. The wind demon hardly stopped fighting, trying to smash his fists upside his creator’s head even as the color left his vision.  Consciousness left him next and his body stilled at last.

            As Byakuya lost consciousness beneath him, a dull banging sound reached Naraku’s ears, the sound of something or someone pounding on the bath house’s front door from the outside.  The sound was muffled due to it having to travel through the thick layer of demonic flesh covering the inside, but still clearly audible by the force of the pounding.  “Sayaka-sama?  _Sayaka-sama!_ Are you all right?  Please, open the door!” A man’s voice called from outside the bath.  Naraku realized that the militiamen from the village down the hill from Sayaka’s shrine had apparently taken notice of the demonic aura emanating from the back of the shrine.  Even if they didn’t have the training to perceive it as a miko could, they could probably at least _see_ it.

            Naraku resolved to ‘deal with’ the militia and possibly their entire village, then return for Byakuya and Sayaka.  Using his youki to vaporize all the semen clinging to his body, he summoned his clothes, a dark lilac silk hakama and haori, and his demonic armor and boots of gleaming metal plate and spikes to materialize around him.  He willed only the flesh covering the interior of the bath house’s door to dissolve, leaving the rest of the house’s walls caked in it.  The lifeless bodies of Sayaka’s younger priestesses would remain as they were: cemented to the fleshy walls, each drenched in cum with a hideous demonic tentacle cock rammed down their throats, keeping a much larger amount of cum bottled up in their lungs.  Naraku thought to leave them and the pool of cum behind in a hellish scene so that when InuYasha and Sesshomaru undoubtedly arrived, they would know exactly what happened, the cost of arriving too late.

            The malevolent oni lord turned and opened the bath house door to find a surprised village militiaman standing before him.  “Good evening,” Naraku bid to the man as he reached out with a large hand, seized the man’s throat and lifted him right off his feet, and crushed his neck with a hideous _crunch_.

            Outside the bath house, at least a dozen other soldiers from the village had gathered, lightly armored and carrying an assortment of weapons ranging from swords to polearms.  They were hardly a match for Naraku.  The one Naraku had just killed was their leader and after processing the shock of watching him die so suddenly, they raised their weapons and charged at the demon lord with a mighty cry.

            Protruding through his clothes and armor, several tentacles grew from Naraku’s back for him to use as his weapons.  These were as prehensile tree roots that converged to extremely sharp blades, and the oni lord descended the bath house steps casually, his metal boots thumping hard on the wooden planks as he used his root-like appendages to impale, decapitate or dismember one soldier after another.  Blood spattered hotly all over his face, clothes, and armor as he killed the guards at barely more than arms-length range.  He took visible pleasure in their cries of death and pain.  After killing six or seven of them, he saw the few that remained break and run away from the shrine.  In their panic, they sprinted, slipped and fell down the sloped forest path that connected the shrine to the village down the hill.  Naraku allowed them to escape, smiling as he heard the shouts and cries coming from the fishing village, followed by the ringing of bronze alarm bells.  Now, the whole village knew of his presence and so, to his delight, he would ‘have’ to kill every man, woman and child in it.

**(Soundtrack: Darkane – The Sinister Supremacy)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTSw2PfJx_s** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTSw2PfJx_s)

            Using his youki, Naraku ascended into the sky so that he levitated high above Sayaka’s shrine and looked out over the forest canopy at the fishing village below.  He spread his arms outward and dozens of portals created from his dark magic formed in the open air around him.  Horrible monsters such as misshapen demonic insects and flying worms and snakes emerged from the portals in the hundreds and descended upon the village in one, massive wave, sweeping into its streets to begin an orgy of wanton violence that even Japan, in its state of lawless feudal conflict, had never seen.  Naraku flew himself down to the village to observe the bloodbath personally, descending upon it as an angel of death, smiling darkly as his demons attacked the village residents in the streets and in their very homes.

            More portals opened on the ground below as Naraku passed overhead, producing demons that crawled, walked or slithered.  As a nominal spider demon, Naraku’s favorites were his giant, man-sized, red-eyed tarantulas.  These enormous spiders overpowered the village’s guards with ease, tackling them to the ground and beginning to feast on their blood and internal organs.  Once inside the village, the spiders entered the village’s homes through their front doors and the sleeping owners of those homes woke up in their beds just in time to see the spiders position themselves atop their bodies and plunge their foot-long fangs right down into their faces, penetrating their skulls and sucking their brains right out.  The screams that ensued, the awful sounds of people being eaten alive, murdered in their beds, fell as beautiful music upon Naraku’s rounded, humanlike ears.

            Hundreds died rapidly, violently in the first few minutes alone and only a small fraction of them were armed to fight back.  Some thought to escape into the sea using the boats moored at the docks, but Naraku’s worm-like aerial demons pursued them, able to travel through water as well as air, and they dragged people off of their assorted vessels to coil around and crush their bodies underwater, or simply let them drown.  Soon, the water nearest to the docks turned red by the sheer amount of human blood pouring out into it, a stunning sight for Naraku to see from his vantage point in the sky.

            Eventually, Naraku felt himself satisfied from all the murder and destruction and decided to put things to a swift, spectacular end.  Floating above the almost depopulated fishing village, he spotted a tall, spacious horse barn on the village outskirts and used his demonic horde to drive the village’s last survivors into it.  The survivors, around fifty in all, consisted mostly of women, children and the elderly, people that for one reason or another were too weak or slow to fight or run.  They cried and screamed pathetically, begging for mercy as Naraku’s monsters kicked, slapped or stabbed them into the barn.  Once all were inside, Naraku used his telekinetic powers to slam the doors shut and lock them with a wooden crossbeam.  He then leveled an open palm with the barn and used his demonic magic to shoot a ball of white-hot fire from it, followed by another and another.  The fireballs hit the barn and exploded forcefully to set the barn’s dry, wooden structure ablaze.

            In less than a minute, the barn was covered in flame, spewing thick black smoke into the sky.  The screams of the people inside became all the more desperate and they fought savagely to escape from whatever opening they could find, only to be shoved right back in by Naraku’s demons.  Soon, the smell of burning human flesh and hair reached Naraku’s nose and the screams reached a terrible, sickening din before falling completely silent.

            Naraku dismissed his demonic horde back into the portals they came from and as he flew over the lifeless village on his way back to Sayaka’s shrine, he cast fireballs onto every single house and structure he could see, transforming the seaside village into a sea of flame that illuminated the surrounding hills.  At this point, he knew that InuYasha and Sesshomaru were working together against him, essentially traveling together, and so he anticipated that Sesshomaru would use Tenseiga upon the dead villagers.  Even though the villagers’ lifeless bodies were in various states of evisceration, decapitation, or _immolation_ , Naraku could not be certain that Tenseiga would not able to heal them from such extreme damage.

            To this end, Naraku descended to the ground, standing in the village’s central crossroads with fires raging all around him.  He aimed his palms to the ground and this time, he did not produce fire from them, but shot gelatinous globs of his demon essence numbered in the hundreds.   Upon hitting the ground, the globs twitched and convulsed to life, spouting finger-like legs and beginning to crawl aimlessly.  Their aimlessness ceased when Naraku issued telepathic commands to them, directing one to the body of every single villager, man, woman, and child alike.

            The globs of demonic flesh dispersed and found their way to the nearest human body, regardless of where it lay, on land or in water.  Upon reaching its victim, each little horror sprouted a fanged mouth and chewed its way into his or her chest, nestling up against that poor soul’s motionless heart and fastening itself to its cardiac tissues.  If and when Sesshomaru used Tenseiga to revive the villagers, their hearts would start beating again, activating Naraku’s ‘surprises,’ and not even another swing of Tenseiga would be able to stop what happened next.  Awoken by its host’s heartbeat, each mass of demonic flesh would consume its host’s heart and the rest of his or her insides, then ‘hatch’ in especially bloody fashion and hopefully, kill InuYasha or a member of his pack, as well.

            When Naraku finally returned to the bath house of Sayaka’s shrine, he found that Byakuya had regained consciousness, sitting naked on the flesh-covered floor with his back against the flesh-covered wall, watching over Sayaka in a dazed state as she sat unconscious in the chest deep pool of demonic semen.  Naraku stood in the bath house doorway, his towering, armored figure silhouetted by the pillar of fire behind him, and Byakuya looked up at his master with an exhausted expression on his face.

            Regarding Byakuya silently for a moment, Naraku stepped into the bath house and strode over to where Sayaka’s nine dead priestesses hung from the flesh-covered wall.  “What…what are you doing _now?_ ” Byakuya asked of his evil master.

            Naraku cast a lethal glare over a shoulder to Byakuya, displeased with his incarnation’s tone.  He then turned his attention to one of the lovely dead women before him, caressing her lifeless, terror-stricken face with a hand, admiring the glassy emptiness and broken blood vessels in her eyes.  He then ventured his hand lower, down between her supple breasts, and plunged it deep into her chest, right under the bottom edge of her ribcage to break through skin, muscle, and internal viscera and take hold of her heart. 

            Dark red blood, depleted of oxygen, poured freely out of the hideous wound Naraku made in the girl as he injected not just one glob of his demonic essence into her chest cavity, but over a dozen, attaching them all directly to her heart.  He withdrew his hand and used his dark magic to seal her chest back up, then repeated the process on the eight remaining women.  With all nine women carrying at least a dozen of Naraku’s monsters in their larval form, each woman’s _second_ death would be especially revolting to InuYasha and his friends.

            Turning from the dead women he’d infected with his demonic flesh, Naraku stooped down to the floor to pick up his Byakuya’s cum-soaked clothes, tossing them to the wind demon in a wrinkled wad.  “Get dressed and grab the miko,” he commanded.  “We’re leaving.”

            Byakuya watched Naraku turn and step out of the bath house to vanish by teleportation.  He looked down at his soiled clothes, then at Sayaka, watching how her chest rose and fell by her unconscious breathing.  With his conscience unblocked, he felt as if some ravenous creature was gnawing away at his insides.  Naraku would have him bring Sayaka along and he wondered: what would she say to him when she woke up?  What would _he_ say to _her?_   Looking out over the treeline, he gazed at the flames pouring out of what had been a prosperous fishing village until just a few minutes ago.  What had happened that night was already so terrible.

            Would anyone survive what was to come?

**-To be continued-**


	7. Damage Control - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sesshomaru and Rin share an intimate moment while InuYasha and Sango do the same.  Pairings: Sesshomaru/Rin, InuYasha/Sango.
> 
>  

**(Soundtrack: Riot – Hot for Love)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRejJ4DE_xk** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRejJ4DE_xk)

            After speaking with InuYasha outside of Kotobukiya, Sesshomaru cradled a feverishly aroused Rin in his powerful arms and flew west toward a den he had made in a nearby mountain range, with Jaken and Ah-Un following close behind.  He used his inu-youkai energy to hold himself and Rin aloft and propel them forward at high speed, the white silk of his clothes, his silvery mane, and his long, fluffy Mokomoko billowing briskly in the oncoming airflow.  Contrasting with the cool air, Rin’s body felt warm and soft in his arms and her delicious aroused scent told him she was ripe for his taking. 

            Rin said as much to Sesshomaru herself as she whispered filthy, sexy nonsense into one of her daiyoukai lover’s elegantly-tapered ears.  “ _Mmm_ …Sesshomaru-sama, Rin is so ready.  Rin needs Sesshomaru-sama _soon_ ,” she moaned, referring to herself in third-person in the way she knew pleased him.  She knew how to speak to Sesshomaru in conventional first-person, like a ‘normal’ person, but speaking in third-person was a little game she liked to play with him and one she knew he enjoyed as well.  She was still thoroughly turned-on from having been so near to InuYasha and Sesshomaru at once and right then, she needed to be _fucked_.  “Rin’s heart beats so fast.  Oh, _Kami_ …Rin…Rin is coming _again!_ ”

            As she and Sesshomaru flew, Rin masturbated by rubbing her thighs together underneath her white-and-orange kimono, pumping her hips rhythmically to keep her pussy stimulated and sopping wet.  With Sesshomaru’s demonic sexual aura still enveloping her, penetrating and arousing her, she took herself into another orgasm with ease and she buried her face into Mokomoko to muffle her cry as she came.  Behind them, Jaken could only roll his bulbous eyes and Ah-Un could only give up an amused snort from each reptilian snout, the two (or three?) of them well accustomed to the way their lord interacted with his mate.  Sesshomaru groaned and swallowed thickly; this was almost too much for even him to handle.  Rin had come twice in just a few minutes and he hadn’t really touched her, yet.  With tremendous excitement, he imagined how hard and frequently she would come when he began to fuck her properly, how the hot, gripping interior of her pussy would ripple and contract around him to suck him off into incredible orgasms of his own. 

            Sesshomaru felt his cock pulsing at a state of especially monstrous erection under his white hakama, more than eleven inches of hot, hard inu daiyoukai organ wedged solidly between his muscular abdomen and the interior of his armor.  His balls were tense and tight in their sac, aching to unleash the reproductive pressure built up within them directly into Rin’s thirsting womb.  He could smell that she was fertile, that she had an egg ready and waiting in her belly and his heartbeat was as thunder in his ears at the mere prospect of giving her his child, even though he knew the sutras InuYasha had given them would prevent conception.  To the pent-up daiyoukai’s relief as well as Rin’s, the mountain den that was his destination came into view below him.

            Sesshomaru’s den was an upward-inclined tunnel ending in a spherical chamber of larger diameter that the daiyoukai had bored directly into the side of the mountain using his powerful youki.  His demonic energy had melted through earth and solid granite with ease and the interior of the stone tunnel displayed a finish free of any tool marks, smoother than any handheld implement of the era could achieve.  Sesshomaru landed on the rocky precipice just in front of his den’s entrance but kept holding the feverishly-aroused Rin to his chest as she continued to pump and grind shamelessly in his arms.  Jaken and Ah-Un landed a moment later but remained outside as their lord and his lover entered the den, preferring to let them have their ‘alone’ time.

            Once inside the pitch dark, spherical bed chamber at the tunnel’s end, Sesshomaru willed his Mokomoko to lengthen greatly from its root in his shoulder and coil up on the smooth, curved stone floor, forming the spacious bed upon which he would take Rin.  He then gathered his youki into a visible mass of shimmering orange flame in a palm and set it afloat in the air so that it served as the dark bed chamber’s light source.  It shone as a long-lasting candle without its shaft of wax, bathing the chamber’s walls in soft, flickering light that accentuated the mood between two lovers about to join their bodies. 

            Sesshomaru all but tossed Rin onto Mokomoko’s cushioning softness and he began to undress impatiently, slipping Tenseiga and Bakusaiga out from the golden sash around his waist and setting them aside with care but bidding ‘to Hell’ to the rest.  Rin beat him to full nudity as she wriggled out of her kimono and the yukata beneath it, writhing around on Mokomoko like some kind of animal shedding its skin.  Her youthful female body completely bare now, she rose to her knees to help Sesshomaru with the clasps of his armor.

            Rin could feel Sesshomaru almost trembling with his need for her and her own body quivered for him right back.  They had been primed and ready for each other for miles and now the moment was upon them.  As Rin undid the last clasp of his armor, Sesshomaru shoved the heavy steel plating off of him and almost ripped his haori open, baring his broad male chest and impressively-sculpted abdomen to her.  He had made a special opening in his haori’s right-hand shoulder and breast for Mokomoko to fit through, allowing him to slip his haori off of his shoulders without first having to pull his pelt’s entire length back through it.

            Sesshomaru’s cock formed a massive bulge in the front of his hakama, his ample pre-cum soaking through the fine white silk of it.  Rin went after his hakama’s drawstring with her teeth, pulling its tie apart and yanking the hakama down so that she could greet her beloved Sesshomaru-sama’s glorious demon cock with her mouth.  “Ngh… _Riiiin!_ ”  The daiyoukai groaned aloud as his mate simply gobbled him up, beginning to suck and jack him with feverish passion.  He had intended to lay her back and fuck her outright, but if she wanted to service him with her mouth first, so be it!  Rin had eleven meaty male inches all to herself to play with, but she had used her mouth on him many times before and so she knew how to take his full length when the time came.  Before she went that far with him, though, she suckled playfully at his broad, oozing crown and the first few inches of veined shaft beyond it, using one hand to stroke his remaining length and her other hand to caress his heavy balls as they pulsed between his muscled thighs in their smooth, hairless sac.

            With Sesshomaru’s thick, delicious cock pulsing in her mouth, Rin gazed up at her beautiful daiyoukai mate with lusty green eyes, seeing the pleasure playing over his handsome face as she worked him up.  His balls grew tense in her palm and she moved that hand around him to splay it over his hard male rear, pressing on it and encouraging him to literally fuck her mouth.  The demon lord complied readily, placing a hand on her head to guide his thrusts, pumping his cock deeper and deeper past her lips until he pushed past her gullet and into her throat.  Her throat bulged out by his sheer size and his muscular hips surged against her face until has was going so deep in her mouth that her nose brushed into the thatch of white, silky-soft hair at his base on every stroke.

            Sesshomaru grasped Rin’s head with both hands and began to thrust against it harder, faster as the pressure built within him.  She let him take over willfully and she removed her hands from him, using one to massage one of her perky breasts and the other to play with her pussy, please herself with her fingers.  “Almost there,” Sesshomaru grunted to assure her.  He timed his rhythm so that Rin could breathe in and out between each stroke and when he saw tears of passion combined with mounting discomfort slipping down her flushed cheeks, orgasm overcame him.  Burying his heavy sac against her chin and holding still, he growled with great male satisfaction as he erupted potently, his cock pulsing and pumping heavy loads of his creamy demon seed down her throat and into her belly.

            Rin’s throat rippled visibly as she swallowed every hot, heavy spurt Sesshomaru had to offer her.  Still shooting, the daiyoukai pulled his cock out of her mouth to let her breathe and his next few ejaculations each burst out a full foot to land all over her hair, her face and chin, and her breasts.  His semen gleamed brightly upon her pale skin by the orb of his demonic light floating nearby, slipping down her skin in clumpy rivers.  Licking her lips of her mate’s delicious taste, she took his cock back into her hands and stroked him to milk his last few shots out onto her tongue, swallowing greedily.

            “So good, Rin.  Thank you,” Sesshomaru praised to his mate as the last trickling globs of his seed left him and his pleasure ebbed away, running a clawed hand through her dark brown hair.  The towering daiyoukai moved to return Rin’s favor as he kicked off his boots, slipped his hakama completely off him, and knelt before her to press her back onto his Mokomoko.  He covered her slight female body with his much larger, heavier male frame to kiss her and taste his own seed on her lips, working his way down the thin column of her neck, over her modest breasts and flat belly until he came to the finely-haired female mound throbbing between her thighs.  He spread her shapely thighs far apart and grasped her sweet, small, yet thoroughly mature female ass with both hands.  He then lowered his silver-maned head between her thighs and took her pussy with his mouth.

            “Oh, Kami, _yes!_ ” Rin cried out happily to Sesshomaru, lifting her hips up against his face as he began to lap and suckle at her delicate pussy flesh and the hooded pearl of her clit.  His tongue was long, strong and oh-so-flexible; he lathed it over her most private external tissues before burying it deep into her pussy’s inner tunnel.  She creamed richly for him, her milky juices flowing freely for him as his tongue slipped past sopping vaginal flesh to graze the smooth, rubbery mouth of her womb, letting him taste the secretions of the precious inner gate he would soon be hammering his cock against.  A few more passes of his tongue and she climaxed right into his mouth, hot jets of creamy, tangy female cum shooting out of the tiny urethral orifice just beneath her clit and blasting into his mouth.

            Sesshomaru lapped up every drop of Rin’s milky essence, drinking from her cunt as if it were some kind of juice-filled fruit that had been suddenly split wide open.  He could _taste_ her fertility and he could feel his cock returning to full, eleven-inch erection, his balls still heavy with their contents.  He had to have her, even if he was not to sire his child with her on this night.  His chin dripping with her fluids as he rose to his knees, he whispered: “ _Sutra._ ”

            Rin reached into her discarded kimono and retrieved the paper package InuYasha had given her earlier.  She tore it open and retrieved one of the contraceptive sutras inside, her hands trembling as she peeled it away from its adhesive backing.  She slapped it onto her belly at a roughshod angle and lay back on Mokomoko to get comfortable, raising her arms above her head to grip on Mokomoko’s fur and brace herself for Sesshomaru’s taking.  “Please, fuck Rin _hard_ ,” she begged.  She spread her thighs as wide as her own flexibility allowed, as her mate’s hips were so very broad.  Sesshomaru loomed large over her and he pressed the head of his huge cock to her cunt, rubbing it up and down her hot, wet slit to get them both wild with need.  He then surged forward, filling her to his big inu balls in one beautifully lubricated stroke.

            Sesshomaru’s lower jaw set tight as Rin’s silky wet pussy flesh simply flowed around his cock, her body swallowing him up with ease.  “So good, Rin _,_ ” he praised almost without breath, relishing in her slick internal heat and the subtle pulse of her heart beating around him.  “So.  Fucking.   _Good!_ ”  After so many passionate encounters with her, she fit him just right and he began pumping deeply into her right away, giving her his full length over and over with a juicy _gush, gush, gush_.

            Rin wept aloud by the intensity of the pleasure she felt as Sesshomaru took her, her breath hitching and breasts bouncing softly with his every hard thrust.  He filled her completely, his cock occupying her full depth from her pussy’s outer lips all the way down to the mouth of her womb with a few inches to spare, stretching her out and sealing her body with his as only he could.  Being so utterly ready for him, the feel of his big, hard cockhead plunging back and forth within her, grinding against her inner muscles made her come almost instantly, her pussy’s gushing pink interior rippling and clenching around him for him to feel.

            Chuckling darkly and quietly in demonic male triumph as Rin reached yet another peak, Sesshomaru pulled out of her suddenly and rose up to turn her over onto her knees, her head and chest pressed down into Mokomoko’s stimulating softness, her lovely ass turned up into the air.  His cock glistened with a dripping coat of her delicious pussy cream.  Holding her by her hips, he slipped into her from behind and began to fuck her much harder than before, his hard male hips contacting her rear with a sharp, rhythmic _slap, slap, slap_.  The slapping grew faster and faster as Sesshomaru sped up, striving for his own pleasure as well as Rin’s.  The head of his cock seared over the swollen sweet spot along her pussy’s anterior wall then plunged deep against her cervix, nudging forcefully at her womb to get her _ovaries_ quivering in delight.

            Then, Sesshomaru moved a hand from Rin’s hip and brought his thumb to his mouth, nibbling his thumb’s sharp, claw-like nail away.  He suckled on his blunted thumb to coat it, lubricate it heavily with his saliva and guided it down between the taut globes of Rin’s ass to touch the small, clean and highly sensitive excretory orifice he saw there.  He bit off his claw so that he would not damage her puckered hole’s delicate structure.  Rin shook at the sensation of Sesshomaru of playing with her ass then shrieked as he sank his thumb into it, working it in and out, around and against her anal interior in time with the pumping of his cock.

            In the figurative sense, Rin blew apart, shattering into climax and entering a series of multiple orgasms that had her shrieking at the top of her lungs.  She was very strong for her light weight and lost in her ecstasy, she pushed her upper body upright with enough force to throw herself back against Sesshomaru’s solid chest, reaching up with both hands to link her fingers behind his broad neck and hold herself there.  The big male daiyoukai leaned back slightly on his haunches to take Rin’s slight weight onto his thighs and balance his body with hers, his thrusts becoming powerful enough to lift her right off her knees as he took himself over the edge of his own orgasmic crest.  He continued to fuck her ass with his thumb all the while.

            Sesshomaru felt himself nearing his peak.  He concentrated on the mouth of Rin’s womb, picturing the healthy pink wall of it bowing against the massive head of his cock, then buried himself to it and held himself there as he came.  His balls tightened and thick jets of cum spewed from his cock to burst through her cervix, exploding directly into her womb and totally flooding it in just a few messy shots.  He visualized the reproductive spectacle, imagining Rin’s vibrant pink womb and pussy walls turning rich, creamy white by the sheer amounts of fluid blasting against them.   The handsome inu daiyoukai tossed his head rearward, his shining silver mane rippling over his back as he loosed a primal male howl to the stone ceiling, announcing his sexual conquest to Jaken, Ah-Un and the entire world beyond.

            Rin’s hands slipped from Sesshomaru’s neck and she slumped forward onto Mokomoko, utterly drained of strength and utterly filled with boiling hot demon seed.  “Rin is…Rin is so full.  _So full!_ ” she breathed, pressing a hand to her belly and feeling the warmth and power of Sesshomaru’s creamy essence swirling around inside her.  The youki in it osmosed through walls of her pussy and womb to enter her blood, prolonging her pleasure for minutes on end.  As with InuYasha and Shippo and their respective women, the sutra Rin wore neutralized even Sesshomaru’s resilient demonic sperm, averting her impregnation.  She dreamed of the day she didn’t have to wear it, the day she and Sesshomaru could finally start their family.

            Gathering his wits about him, Sesshomaru lay over Rin again, removing his thumb from her ass and easing them onto one side atop Mokomoko.  He kept his cock sheathed within her, still throbbing and oozing at full staff against her pussy’s pulsing inner flesh.  He nuzzled and kissed at her neck and shoulder from behind to soothe her, nipping playfully at one of her rounded human ears.  “Rin is full, and this Sesshomaru is empty… _for now_ ,” he said, licking at her hot, sweaty skin and giving a playful thrust against her rear.

            “Oh _God_ , don’t let me encourage you,” Rin rasped with a laugh, reaching back to run a hand through Sesshomaru’s thick, silky hair.  She felt his cock twitch within her; he had hardly lost any size or hardness even after two copious orgasms.  “You’re so…so _powerful_ during breeding season.”

            “I am powerful for _you_ …and you can take everything I can offer and more,” Sesshomaru stated proudly, proud of his own virility and Rin’s ability to withstand it.  “Perhaps you really _can_ handle myself and my brother at once.”

            “I intend to try.  _Mmm_ …Sesshomaru-sama and InuYasha-sama making a Rin sandwich,” Rin imagined dreamily.  “I can’t wait.  Sleep first, though.”

            “ _Hn_ ,” was Sesshomaru’s grunt of a reply.  He heard Rin’s heart slow down and her breathing even out as she fell asleep before him and he pulled a portion of Mokomoko over her bare body to keep her warm as she rested.  He wasn’t tired himself, though, needing sleep less frequently and in smaller amounts than the average human, so he contented himself with watching over his lover as she slept, basking in her body’s warmth.

            He resolved to give her an hour or two, then take her _again_.

~~~~~

 

**(Soundtrack: Savatage – Hard for Love)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0gAX87zjus** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0gAX87zjus)

            While Sesshomaru banged Rin hard in his den, back in Kotobukiya, InuYasha woke in the very early pre-dawn morning between Kagome and Shizu upon their futon, waking to the scent of another woman’s arousal and the soft, breathless vocalizations of her sexual pleasure: _Sango’s_.  His furry white dog ears perked up and rotated to find the source of Sango’s voice, determining that it was coming from the inn’s bath down the hall.  The taijiya’s scent smelled beyond delicious to him but strangely, neither Miroku’s scent nor anyone else’s came with it.  With a start, InuYasha realized that Sango was probably _masturbating_.

            Nude, the hanyou warrior rose from the futon he shared with Kagome and Shizu, his cock already filling out and swelling up with his hot male hanyou blood by the scent of female need and self-gratification in the air.  He left the bedroom quietly and moved down the inn’s hallway to the bath, nudging its shoji door open just enough to peer inside.  There, facing the door, Sango sat naked on the wooden edge of the bath with finely-muscled thighs spread wide, breathing harsh and husky as she pumped a thick red plastic sex toy in and out of her cunt.  By her sheer lubrication, the thing made a messy squelching sound as she moved it inside her body.  The toy had been a highly embarrassing gag gift from Kagome some time back but Sango had since come to appreciate its practical application.

            InuYasha’s golden eyes grew wide at the sight of Sango fucking herself silly in the bath.  He could see rivulets of perspiration flowing down her bare skin by the steamy heat of the bath and her own exertions.  He was still quite hot and bothered after learning that Rin wanted to fuck him and Sesshomaru at the same time, and so arousal came to him very easily. 

            By his breeding heat, the whites of InuYasha’s eyes turned blood red with half-demon power and his golden irises glowed incandescent green as his inner demon sought to take control of him.  It spoke to him in silent mantras: _Mount.  Claim.  Breed!_ The beautiful female taijiya pleasuring herself before him was part of his pack and with the permission of every other pack member, Kagome and Miroku in particular, he and Sango had sex often.  Thus, he had no reason to hide himself from her any longer.  If she needed some ‘attention’ beyond even that which Miroku had shown her last night, he was only too happy to provide it himself.  Already close to full erection, he slid the bath’s door open and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

            Sango looked up and smiled as a gloriously nude InuYasha entered the bath boldly, slowing the strokes of her hand and the toy she held with it.  She could see the inu hanyou’s eyes glowing with demonic sexual power and she could feel his aroused male youki flowing out of him invisibly, washing over her to get her heart beating wild with passion as the fake phallus in her hand could not.  Her gaze slipped downward over his broad, muscular chest and tightly toned abdomen to see that his cock was already big and hard for her, his balls heavy and full in their smooth sac even after unloading repeatedly into Kagome and Shizu.  He appeared to have plenty of energy and _fluid_ left for her.  Her casual clothes, her red-and-white haori and green skirt, lay folded up on the floor near her, a contraceptive sutra laying atop them, and she took the sutra to apply it to her belly in anticipation of the coming sexual act.

            Stepping down into the water and wading through it to approach Sango, InuYasha spoke softly, concerned by the demon slayer’s hot and bothered state.  “Damn, Sango.  You didn’t get enough, last night?” he asked.  By the sounds she had made the night before, he had thought that Miroku had done an excellent job of pleasing her, but then again, he knew that the pheromones and raw energy he put out during breeding season kept her and the other women almost constantly receptive.  Further, he knew that his own appetite was quite voracious.  With Sango, he was about to have his third woman in the space of just a few hours.

            Sango shook her head, pumping her fake cock in and out of her pussy a few more times, then pulling it out to lick its glistening phallic length clean for InuYasha to see.  Hot, transparent female fluid drooled freely out of her sex by the toy’s absence and she could feel her vagina’s interior twitching anxiously, aching to be stretched and filled again.  “You know that Miroku can’t have me without a condom,” she said ruefully, clearly aching to have her beloved houshi’s seed inside her.  “I…I need cum, InuYasha.  I need it inside of me.  Deep inside, filling me up.  If I can’t have Miroku’s, then with this sutra I can have yours.  I thought I’d do this with myself to get you to come to me.”  To emphasize how badly she wanted, _needed_ InuYasha, Sango reached down between her thighs with a hand, forming an inverted ‘V’ with her fingers to spread her pussy petals wide open, offering her body to her handsome pack leader.

            Gazing deeply into Sango’s tender, pulsing inner pinkness, InuYasha’s heart sped up in his chest and his cock jerked visibly by its galloping beat.  Pre-cum welled at its head and dripped away from it into the steamy bath water as he knelt between Sango’s open thighs, looking her in her chocolate brown eyes.  He placed his hands on her knees and stroked them over her thighs to grasp her slim waist, gliding his claws over her hot skin.  She sat upright so that their faces were generally level with one another and he eased his mouth closer to hers.  “You could have just woken me, you know,” he said to her as he eyed her full lips intently.

            Sango set her sex toy aside on the floor and cupped that now empty hand to a side of InuYasha’s face, running a thumb over the jagged magenta stripe that had formed on his cheek.  It was a mark of his powerful bloodline.  He was so strong and beautiful and she felt so lucky, so incredibly fortunate to have such an extraordinary physical ‘specimen’ like him in constant easy reach.  Even better, she knew that by the way his eyes glowed blood red with demonic passion, he felt the same way about her.  “This way is more fun,” she answered with a sultry smile.

            InuYasha closed in to kiss Sango fiercely, dueling his agile tongue against hers.  They spent a few moments like this, pumping and grinding against each other as they drank from each other’s lips.  However, he was so hard and huge for her and she was so sopping wet for him already that further foreplay was completely out of the question.  His thick white tail swishing from side to side over his rear, the hanyou warrior lay his sexy slayer back onto the bathroom floor behind her and stood up in the water, looming over her as a rutting male animal about to claim its mate.  With him standing in the bath pool’s water and her laying on the bath pool’s edge, their hips were at the right height for one another and he leaned over her to spear his cock deep into her pussy with little difficulty.

            Sango gave up a completely happy mewl as InuYasha filled her to the brim.  She pushed her upper body up onto her elbows so that she could look down between her body and his and watch him pump his big, hot hanyou cock in and out of her.  He gyrated his hips playfully, mating the dense ridge of bone at his base to her hooded clit over and over.  The head of him was huge and full in her cunt and she could feel it dragging back and forth against her inner muscles, spreading them far apart to make way for the thick shaft behind it.  He thrust deep to touch the mouth of her womb on every stroke and by how much she had worked herself up with her toy before, she came for him immediately, climaxing again and again.  Her pussy flooded over around him and her juices sopped out of her freely as he displaced them with his cock, coating his balls and practically gushing down between the taut globes of her rear to drip away into the bath water.

            InuYasha felt his pleasure building rapidly, so fast that he couldn’t hope to hold it back.  Sango wasn’t just beautiful, she was _strong,_ one of the most physically and emotionally strong women he had ever met and his half-demon instincts sang for her: _Yes!  Hot bitch!  Claim!_  The scars of battle she bore on her flesh were testaments to her strength.  When he first met her, the very first thing she did was try to kill him, deceived by Naraku into believing that he had destroyed her village, killed her friends and family.  He remembered the hatred and the drive burning in her rich brown eyes as she buried her sword into him and now he saw only pleasure and love there as he buried his own ‘sword’ into her.  Her vagina’s interior clenched tightly around him by her orgasms, elevating the stimulation for him.  His balls grew totally tense and he felt the creamy liquid pressure in them begin to move into his cock as he slipped into orgasm.

            “ _Yes_ ,” Sango encouraged to InuYasha, seeing the ecstasy playing across his face and feeling him beginning to swell and throb within her.  She lifted her hips against his, meeting his thrusts to take him as deep as she possibly could.  It was time.  “Yes, _please._  Give it to me, InuYasha.  Oh, _God!_  Fill me up!”

            “ _Grrr…Sango!_ ” InuYasha grit out, speaking the lusty taijiya’s name as a devilishly sexy curse as he came hard deep inside her.  Huge loads of sperm-loaded hanyou cum churned out of his balls, pumped up his cock and burst out against her cervix, flowing through into her womb to fill it with his potent liquid essence.  His heart hammered in his ears, each heavy beat preceding the rich, throbbing _gush_ of ejaculation.  Swiftly, he angled his dog ears to focus them on Sango’s flat stomach and use his superhuman hearing to listen closely.  _Gush_ was the sound of his cream surging out of him and _thwack_ was the sound of that hot, heavy spurt slamming against the back wall of Sango’s womb.  Gush.  Thwack.  Gush.  Thwack.  The sound of his soupy cream touching her innermost female flesh against the background of her heartbeat took him ever higher, providing his inner demon with the ultimate male satisfaction.

            Briefly, InuYasha felt tempted to snatch Sango’s enchanted sutra away from her belly and let her become pregnant with his child, his _pup_.  It would be so fucking _easy_ \- just a swipe of his finger and the sutra would be gone, leaving only the movement of a few tiny cells standing between Sango and the conception of new life.  Right then, there was so much of his cum washing around inside her that it couldn’t possibly take longer than a few seconds.  The child he might have with her, a son or daughter born of a father as powerful as himself and mother as powerful as her, would kick so much _ass_ , he thought.  The hanyou warrior refrained from disturbing the sutra, though, as he knew that Sango wanted her first child to be fathered by Miroku, and they couldn’t let that happen until Naraku was no longer a threat.  After that, though…

            Sango trembled in pleasure as she felt InuYasha’s youki osmose out of his cum, seep through her vaginal and uterine tissues and enrich her very blood.  She _felt_ the stuff flooding out of him and into her when he came and now it was as if her body was digesting it.  The resulting orgasm stole her breath. “Oh, fuck…fuck, fuck, _fuck!_ ” she sneered as she let her head fall back, closing her eyes and clamping a hand over her mouth to keep herself from waking the other members of the pack.  To her, letting InuYasha come inside her, unleash his demon seed into her very core felt like getting suddenly, extremely and gloriously drunk, a delicious narcotic effect she knew she might never get with Miroku.  She eased her upper body off her elbow and settled onto the bathroom’s wooden floor to open her eyes halfway and gaze up at the ceiling, feeling InuYasha continue to jerk and pulse inside her, spew more of his cream into her belly.

            InuYasha followed Sango down to the bath’s wooden floor, covering her sleek female curves with his raw male angles.  By his own relief and the satisfaction he could feel flowing off of his lovely taijiya, the crimson glow in his eyes dissipated and his irises reverted to their normal, golden hue.  He wrapped his arms around Sango’s waist to hold her close to him and buried his face to her throat as he basked in sex’s afterglow with her.  “God…you sweet, sexy demon-slaying _bitch..._ ” he whispered, giving her neck a passionate lick of his rough, dog-like tongue.  “Love you.”

            Sango smiled dreamily, running a hand through InuYasha’s ivory mane and playing with his one of his adorable, yet dangerously sexy dog ears as he allowed only his ‘bitches’ to do.  “Love you, too…you big-dicked sex puppy.”

            Still hard, InuYasha pulled out of Sango with a _pop_ of broken suction and thick loads of his seed came bleeding out of her after him, flowing down her rear into the bath water below.  A gleaming thread of male and female fluid linked their bodies briefly, stretching out and breaking as he pulled away from her.  He kissed his way down her toned, sweaty demon-slaying body, sucking playfully at her breasts and nipples, then knelt into the water to place his head between her thighs and seal his mouth to her cunt.  He sucked his own cum out of Sango as he had done with Kagome and Shizu, lapping at her well-fucked hole to clean her and get her climaxing in his face.  He looked up at her between her full breasts with her juices slathered all over his chin and the molten, appreciative expression in her rich brown eyes told him that she was willing to continue. 

            InuYasha stood in the water once more and turned Sango over onto her stomach, urging her onto her hands and knees before him.  Gently, he spread her knees apart to put her hips at just the right height for his again and he mounted her from behind, sinking his cock into her for the second time that morning.  Just as he delivered his first strokes into her sopping female core, he and she both felt the instantly sobering sensation of Naraku’s evil youki rip over them.  They tensed against each other and the taijiya looked over her shoulder at the hanyou warrior holding himself balls deep inside her, his eyes and hers stark with realization.

            “Shit.  _Shit!”_ InuYasha cursed, pulling out of Sango abruptly and backing away from her, leaving the bathroom swiftly to return to Kagome and Shizu in their bedroom. “Kagome, Shizu!  _Wake up!_ ”

            Naraku had struck at last!

 

**-To be continued-**


	8. Damage Control - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> InuYasha and his pack sense Naraku attacking the miko Sayaka’s village and move to investigate.  Along the way, they join up with Sesshomaru and his pack.  Once at Sayaka’s village, they find the scene of one of Naraku’s most depraved crimes yet and are forced to take drastic action to keep the damage from spreading.

 

**(Continued from pt. 1)**

            InuYasha stood in the water once more and turned Sango over onto her stomach, urging her onto her hands and knees before him.  Gently, he spread her knees apart to put her hips at just the right height for his again and he mounted her from behind, sinking his cock into her for the second time that morning.  Just as he delivered his first strokes into her sopping female core, he and she both felt the instantly sobering sensation of Naraku’s evil youki rip over them.  They tensed against each other and the taijiya looked over her shoulder at the hanyou warrior holding himself balls deep inside her, his eyes and hers stark with realization.

            “Shit.  _Shit!”_ InuYasha cursed, pulling out of Sango abruptly and backing away from her, leaving the bathroom swiftly to return to Kagome and Shizu in their bedroom. “Kagome, Shizu!  _Wake up!_ ”  Naraku had struck at last!

**(Soundtrack: Nevermore – Narcosynthesis)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgV33bP6AtE** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgV33bP6AtE)

            Kagome had been dreaming peacefully up to this point, but with her elevated sensitivity to demonic energy, Naraku’s foul aura transformed her dreams into abstract nightmares and she began to wake even before InuYasha entered the room.  Imaginations of Naraku grinning so widely and with such insanity that she could _hear_ it broke her from sleep.  She sat bolt upright upon her futon to see a naked InuYasha scrambling into his Fire-Rat clothing, hearing him curse about ‘fucking goddamn Naraku.’  She also saw a naked Sango flash past the bedroom’s open doorway as the taijiya sought to wake Miroku and get into her armored bodysuit. 

            Before he covered it with his red hakama, Kagome caught a glimpse of InuYasha’s cock; it was fully erect and glistening brightly with a heavy coat of what looked to be a woman’s pussy cream – most likely Sango’s.  She was fully aware that InuYasha and Sango were probably having sex and she fully approved, approval shared by the rest of the pack.  Any other time, Kagome might have laughed or felt a little aroused at the spectacle of a nude Sango streaking down the hall, but Naraku’s involvement in the situation prevented her from taking any enjoyment from it.  She turned upon her futon to shake Shizu awake and once he had dressed, InuYasha left the bedroom to rouse Shippo and Shiori.

            Sometime during the night, Kirara had returned to the bedroom Sango shared with Miroku and the tiny fire-cat waited for her two-legged friends to open the inn’s outer door for her, rather than transform and batter through it, possibly alarming the villagers.  Once outside, she transformed into her sabretooth form and a fully-dressed Miroku and Sango leapt atop her immediately, riding her into the sky.  Shippo used his kitsune magic to transform into a larger version of his ‘Fire-Fox,’ his back and saddle now long enough to seat three people: Kagome, Shizu and Shiori.

            Once dressed, packed-up and assembled, the pack left Kotobukiya hurriedly, not having time to say goodbye to anyone.  Shippo and the three women atop him led the group, with Kagome guiding him to fly in the direction she sensed Naraku’s aura.  Miroku and Sango followed close behind atop Kirara and InuYasha moved on foot below them.  No one realized that they had at least two hundred miles to go to reach the seaside village that Naraku was attacking at that moment.

            “Kagome, how far away is he?” InuYasha called up to his miko love, running at high speed to keep up with her as Shippo carried her, Shizu and Shiori forward.  While he could sense Naraku’s presence in an absolute sense, between him and Kagome only Kagome could estimate distances with any accuracy.

            “Far, as in miles.  Dozens at least,” Kagome responded, analyzing her senses carefully, not knowing that she was still underestimating the range.  Looking forward again, she visualized Naraku’s terrible demonic aura on the distant horizon.  It was as an ink-black cloud radiating a dark, bloody violet corona of pure, distilled evil; she had never felt it so intense before.  She could perceive it descending on and swallowing up a much smaller mass of relatively purer light, a light that she realized was a fellow priestess’ reiki.  “He’s fighting with someone, a miko!”

            InuYasha’s heart raised into his throat at the implication.  A miko?  He thought: was it _Kikyo_ or someone else?  He decided not to ask, as the subject of Kikyo was one that still caused some difficulty between himself and Kagome, even if he was enjoying a sexual relationship with her and every other female member of the pack at once.  After only a minute or so of travel to the northeast, travelling over open grassy plains and sparse forest, InuYasha sensed Sesshomaru approaching fast from behind.

            Sesshomaru had felt Naraku’s aura at the same time InuYasha did.  He and his pack departed his mountain den as quickly as his brother’s left Kotobukiya.  At the time, while Jaken and Ah-Un enjoyed the cool night air outside the den, Sesshomaru had been enjoying another round with his nearly-insatiable Rin, reclining upon Mokomoko while she straddled his lap widely, riding his big demon cock hard and fast.  For Naraku to interrupt their private time literally mid-stroke had Rin terribly frustrated and Sesshomaru silently livid – right then, they were both looking for retribution.  Rin and Jaken rode Ah-Un through the air while Sesshomaru flew solo a few yards ahead of them.  The daiyoukai seemed to realize the distance they would all be travelling and he swooped down to the ground to grab InuYasha by the rear collar of his red haori as he ran, lifting him up into the air with ease.

            “Hey, what you _doing?_ ” InuYasha protested as Sesshomaru man-handled him without warning.

            “We fly,” Sesshomaru responded curtly.  “Unless you _want_ to run the whole way.”  The daiyoukai regained altitude swiftly, his strength allowing him to hold a roughly 200-pound InuYasha from a single hand at arm’s length with ridiculous ease, and he projected his demonic energy down his arm to envelop the hanyou warrior in a sleek, invisible bubble of it.  His youki buoyed InuYasha’s body so that he levitated and flew alongside him.

            By allowing Sesshomaru to carry him through the air, InuYasha realized that he could save his strength for the potential fight ahead and he conceded.  “Okay, this’ll work.”  He added gruffly: “Thanks.”

            “Hn,” Sesshomaru replied to his brother, his eyes glowing with satisfaction.  The daiyoukai maneuvered himself and InuYasha so that they flew alongside Kagome, Shizu and Shiori as they rode Shippo’s back.

            Kagome’s eyes as well as everyone else’s fixed upon Sesshomaru, then on Rin, Jaken and Ah-Un, respectively as he and InuYasha joined the flight.  Kagome herself had felt Sesshomaru’s aura approaching well before she saw him, but to see him join her and her friends so boldly was striking nonetheless.  The daiyoukai’s tremendous demonic energy was easily palpable to the miko from the future and like InuYasha, with his gorgeous golden eyes and shimmering silver mane, he was ridiculously good-looking, too. 

            Still hot from the good, hard pounding InuYasha had given her and Shizu the night before, it took only a few seconds for Kagome to begin thinking about Sesshomaru in a sexual manner, even though she flew toward a dangerous confrontation with Naraku.  She undressed him with her eyes, visualizing the undoubtedly thickly-muscled chest and abdomen he kept concealed beneath his immaculate white robes and gleaming armor.  She imagined that his hips were built just as solidly and she pictured them pumping hard and fast between Rin’s thighs and her own as he fucked them into screaming orgasms atop his silky-soft Mokomoko.

            Kagome’s inner hentai suggested to her that by his height, weight and breadth, the ‘pureblood’ demon lord was hung at least as well or even better than his half-demon brother.  She had never broken out a ruler or a tape measure, but by rough measurements she had made with her hands and her mouth, she estimated that InuYasha’s cock was at least nine inches long when fully erect.  When he had it buried completely inside her, she could feel its big crown pulsing right up against her womb and when he came, his ejaculations felt like hot, creamy liquid fists smacking right into her cervix.  If InuYasha was blessed with nine inches, Kagome guessed that the seven-foot Sesshomaru, being a full demon, was packing ten, maybe _eleven_.  Rin was such a petite woman, shorter and lighter than herself, and Kagome wondered: how could she handle a cunt-stretching, womb-raiding monster like _that?_   How did it _feel?_

            Further, now that she and InuYasha were seriously involved with each other, Kagome supposed that Sesshomaru was now something like her brother-in-law.  Even if she was fucking Miroku and Shippo on the side, she pondered: what did it make of her now that she was entertaining sexual notions of _him?_  “Sesshomaru.  Uh, _hello_ ,” Kagome greeted awkwardly, even as her pussy clenched at the thought of taking the demon lord to her bed.  “You’re coming with us?”

            Sesshomaru glanced at Kagome directly to regard her with stoic respect.  By his position to her side, out of the airflow behind her, he could not smell her body’s growing desire, but he could definitely hear her heart speeding up.  He knew it to be the heartbeat of a woman thinking intently about sex, of accepting a strong, worthy male into her body, as he heard the same sound in Rin on a nightly basis.  Perhaps, he thought, that if he was willing to offer Rin to InuYasha, with Rin’s express consent, InuYasha might be willing to share Kagome in return _,_ to say nothing of Sango, Shizu, or Shiori.  He imagined himself and his brother doing Rin together, then trapping the lovely miko from the future between their powerful demonic bodies and sheathing themselves deep within her to give her a hard, pumping fuck she’d never forget.  He said nothing of this as he answered, though.  “Yes…” he paused, briefly preoccupied with his explicit sexual thoughts.  “We will present a stronger front against Naraku if we band together.”

            Kagome nodded in agreement, almost forgetting to breathe.  Having been around InuYasha, Miroku and Shippo for so long and having accepted their sexual advances so often, she recognized the gleam in Sesshomaru’s eyes and knew exactly what he was thinking of.  Immediately, she realized that he probably saw the same thing in her own eyes as she ogled him.  Her face flushing, she returned her attention to the horizon before her.

            Behind Kagome on Shippo’s back, Shizu looked at InuYasha, then at Sesshomaru, considering each male’s great power and predisposition to lead, to be ‘alpha.’  She raised an important point to them.  “So…who’s in charge?”

Sesshomaru looked to Shizu, then to InuYasha.  His golden eyes became thoughtful.  “Between the two of us, you lead the larger pack,” he said to the inu hanyou.  “You may be… _in charge_.”

 _Holy shit._   This was InuYasha’s only thought as he grappled with the enormity of the idea of him telling Sesshomaru, _Lord of the Mother-Fucking West_ what to do, if only temporarily.  Kagome and the others had similar thoughts.  “S-sounds good,” InuYasha croaked out.

            Ever so slightly, Sesshomaru’s eyebrows arched and his thin male lips curled with mirth at InuYasha’s astonishment.  That mirth didn’t stay for very long, as barely half an hour later, he and InuYasha noticed Kagome cup her hand over her mouth as if in horror.  The daiyoukai altered his course minutely so that he and his brother flew more closely alongside her as she rode Shippo’s back.

            “What is it?” InuYasha asked of Kagome.  “What’s happened?”

            “Naraku, he’s…he’s killed someone.  Now another…and _another_ ,” Kagome hushed.  The deaths she sensed were those of the miko Sayaka’s junior priestesses.  Naraku murdered them by pumping his demonic semen directly into their lungs, drowning them in a most hideous manner and thoroughly enjoying it.  Though she remained unaware of the specifics, the girls’ last moments were filled with a silent screaming terror so intense that Kagome could feel it at a distance of more than two hundred miles.  Helplessly, she felt their lives fade to nothingness and a few minutes later, Naraku’s slaughter of every single man, woman and child in the fishing village downhill from Sayaka’s shrine began in earnest.  All Kagome could manage to say then was: “Oh, God.”

            InuYasha felt his blood run cold by the resulting expression on Kagome’s face and decided not to ask anything more.  He ordered tersely to Shippo and Kirara: “Faster!”  Looking at Sesshomaru as the daiyoukai held him aloft in the air, he repeated the command as a plea.  “Please.  _Faster._ ”

            Out of InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s temporarily merged ‘pack,’ the relatively slowest flier was Ah-Un.  The double-headed dragon could fly at a top speed of around a hundred miles per hour, so in the interest of keeping the pack together in the air, that was the speed Sesshomaru, Shippo and Kirara held themselves to.  Over the next two hours, no one spoke another word and as they flew on into the break of dawn, they watched worriedly as the sun rose over the horizon of the Japanese countryside passing to their right.

            The pack came upon the remains of the fishing village while the sun was still fairly close to the Pacific horizon, its light shimmering across the seawater.  The break of a new day contrasted with the sudden, violent ends the villagers had met overnight.  Miles before, the pack had spotted dense black smoke plumes billowing out of the destroyed village and as they came upon it, they orbited high above it silently, staying upwind of the smoke as best they could as they searched for signs of life.  They saw none.

            “ _Oh_ , _fuck…”_ InuYasha mouthed in disbelief at the scene of devastation below him.  Every single house and building had been torched, the remains still smoldering, and through the momentary gaps in the smoke flowing from the ruins, he could catch glimpses of dozens of bodies lying in the streets.  Bodies floated lifelessly in the bloody water close to the village’s docks and hung halfway out of drifting boats and canoes, as well.  Getting Shippo’s attention, he pointed to one of the forested hills overlooking the village.  “Set down right there,” he said to the transformed kitsune.  With Kagome, Shizu and Shiori on his back, Shippo descended to the hill and landed as InuYasha directed, with Kirara, Miroku and Sango following.  Sesshomaru and InuYasha landed next, followed by Rin and Jaken atop Ah-Un.

            Miroku and Sango dismounted Kirara while Kagome, Shizu and Shiori dismounted Shippo.  Shippo reverted to his handsome humanoid form but Kirara remained as a battle-cat as a precaution.  Rin and Jaken climbed off of Ah-Un and as Sesshomaru released InuYasha from his youki field, everyone moved to stand in a wide circle, facing one another.

            “Naraku’s not here,” Kagome said to her friends, using her spiritual ‘sight beyond sight’ to scan the village below them and the surrounding hills.  To her, the oni lord’s aura, as intense and distinct as it was, had vanished as quickly as it appeared.  “We’ve missed him.”

            Miroku stood with his back to the destroyed village.  He looked over a shoulder at it, having difficulty grasping the scale of the situation, then looked to InuYasha.  “This is such a mess.  What do we do?”

            “We look for survivors,” InuYasha said decisively, gripping Tetsuseiga’s scabbard tightly.  “We go through every single house and building down there, but there’s still a lot of smoke, so fires are probably still burning.  We need a way to put them out.”

            “We’re beside the sea,” Kagome noted, glancing at the vast Pacific Ocean before her.  “We have all the water we need, but how do we get it to the fires?  A bucket?”

            “ _Yeah_ ,” Shippo agreed thoughtfully.  “A really _big_ bucket.”

**(Soundtrack: Avantasia – The Wicked Symphony)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqYIWGAkNkk** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqYIWGAkNkk)

            Everyone looked to Shippo as he backed away from the group and leapt high into the air, using his kitsune magic to transform into what looked to be the single largest wooden-walled, steel-banded water bucket ever seen on Earth, or any planet, for that matter.  Twenty feet in diameter and twenty feet tall, ‘Bucket Shippo’ boasted a potential volume of nearly 50,000 liquid gallons.  A pair of his signature googly-eyes formed on the arbitrary ‘front’ of him, followed by a broad, thin line of a mouth whose ends curled upward in a goofy smile.

            InuYasha looked Bucket Shippo over and nodded his approval.  “Good thinking,” he praised.  “Now, fill up from the sea and start dousing flames!”

            Shippo turned and flew out over the sea, submerging himself and filling with seawater as InuYasha ordered.  He filled to brimming capacity and as he lifted away from the sea, the tide along the body-strewn fishing village receded visibly by the volume removed from it.  The transformed fox demon then rose ponderously into the sky above the village, the 50,000 gallons of water he carried weighing more than 200 tons.  Carefully and methodically, he maneuvered himself to levitate atop each burning house and building and tilted forward to pour his contents onto the burning or smoldering structure beneath him, extinguishing it in seconds.  He began on one end of the fishing village, working his way through it in a serpentine pattern until every fire had been put out.  Once he had finished, Shippo returned to his auburn-haired humanoid form.

            With the fires out and the smoke subdued, the real work of saving whatever lives could be saved could begin and InuYasha looked to his friends, Sesshomaru and his pack included.  “Okay, let’s go,” he said, turning and beginning to descend the hill he stood upon.  Everyone followed after him and immediately upon setting foot inside the destroyed fishing village, they found mutilated and/or charred human bodies lying all around, in the streets, in burned-out alleys and doorways, everywhere.

            InuYasha grimaced at the horrible scene around him.  He looked behind him to his friends: he knew that Kagome, Sango, Miroku, Shippo and Kirara had all seen things like this before, the grisly aftermath of the demon attack that Naraku instigated on Sango’s home village foremost among them.  Sesshomaru and Ah-Un both were probably hundreds of years old and so they had seen some ‘things’ in their time, but Shizu, Shiori, and Rin hadn’t, though.  Tsukuyomaru’s widow and her half-demon daughter had put up with a lot of nonsense, even violence from their neighbors in their home village before joining up with him and his pack, but none of it had ever looked like _this._   Further, Sesshomaru had done a good job of protecting Rin during his travels with her, ensuring that she was never exposed to the aftermath of such violence, even if she was aware that it had happened.

            In the village’s main street, a dazed Shiori knelt beside the body of a human girl that Naraku or his demons had stabbed to death, while Shizu looked on grimly.  Near the girl’s body lay what was likely one of her toys, a roughly foot-tall doll in the form of a grown woman, its tiny handmade clothes spattered with blood.  Shiori thought that it hadn’t been so long ago that she was the dead girl’s age, or had a doll like hers.  All of a sudden, for the few times she had seen Naraku or his incarnations, the threat that they posed to her, her mother, and to everyone around them seemed much more real.

            InuYasha glanced at all the bodies around him and his friends, then at Sesshomaru and the swords he carried at his hip.  Thankfully, Tenseiga was still one of them.  “Sesshomaru, you’ve got Tenseiga,” he noted.  “Please tell me that you can fix this.”

            Sesshomaru felt Tenseiga pulse at his hip and he placed a hand upon its hilt.  “Tenseiga speaks to me.  This is a good sign,” he said to InuYasha.  By Tenseiga’s grace, in his mind’s eye he could see the imp-like servants of the underworld scurrying about the ruined village before him, congregating around dead humans to prey on their souls.  Tenseiga gave an especially urgent pulse and the demon lord knew that it wanted to be used.  “Totosai once told me that as Tetsuseiga can take a hundred lives in one swing, Tenseiga can _save_ a hundred.  Let us find out.”

            InuYasha’s golden eyes narrowed as Sesshomaru drew Tenseiga from its sheath.  He could _hear_ the sword’s song pouring off its blade, the silent song of death undone.  He stepped back away from Sesshomaru, as did the others of his pack, and the daiyoukai gave a swift, mighty swing of Tenseiga in a roughly 200 degree arc in front of him.  A blast of totally non-destructive healing energy left Tenseiga’s blade and cleaved through the village, sundering the servants of the underworld and banishing them from the mortal plane of existence.  A few seconds later, both Sesshomaru and InuYasha could hear dozens, then _hundreds_ of formerly lifeless human hearts beginning to beat again.

            Before the eyes of everyone in InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s joined pack, the horrible wounds in the bodies of the slain villagers mended as life took hold of them once more, to their profound relief.  Along with their relief came a sort of reverse morbid fascination as Tenseiga worked its magic; not only did the villagers’ wounds close, their severed limbs, seared skin, and burned hair _regrew_ , as if nothing had happened to them.  Their clothes went unaffected by Tenseiga’s blessing, though, leaving some people wearing only half an outfit, the missing half lost to flame or other causes.

            Empowered, Sesshomaru marched down the fishing village’s main street, using his Tenseiga to resurrect everyone he could find.  InuYasha and the others followed behind him and they left behind them a trail of bewildered, freshly-resurrected villagers that shouted and screamed in total disorientation, scrambling back and forth between houses in search of friends and family members.  Eventually, the pack came upon the burned-out remains of the barn that Naraku had herded his final victims into.  All noticed the charred bones of someone’s arm hanging out of one of the barn’s ground level windows and they stopped in their tracks: judging from the short length and thinness of them, the bones were those of a child’s arm. 

            Seething, InuYasha stormed forward past Sesshomaru to rip what remained of the barn’s doors clean off of their hinges and he found himself immediately treated to the sight of a knee-deep pile of incinerated bodies gathered on the charred, hay-strewn floor, one that still reeked of melted flesh and burned hair.  The bones of the child-sized skeleton hanging halfway out the barn’s window were supported from the inside by a much larger, adult one, as if that man or woman had been trying to push the child out of the barn.  Naraku had burned these people _alive_.

            InuYasha stepped aside and Sesshomaru did not hesitate to use Tenseiga.  One swipe of it and the pile of immolated villagers began to stir, their bodies healing back to their original states in seconds.  InuYasha, Miroku, and Shippo then began helping people off of the pile as quickly as they could so that the ones at the bottom wouldn’t suffocate or be crushed back to death by the hundreds of pounds of fellow humans pressing down on them.  For some of them, their clothes had been completely burned away and as soon as they got back onto their feet and realized their nakedness, they screeched and ran as fast as they could back to what remained of their homes, searching for replacement clothes.  After a few minutes, some of the people that Sesshomaru revived first regained enough presence of mind to recognize that he, InuYasha, and all the others of their pack were strangers.  The village guards, the first ones to fall to Naraku, were among them and they responded violently.

            “You!  _Stop there!_ ” the guards shouted, unsheathing their swords and raising their polearms as they surrounded InuYasha and his friends.  Wisely, Sesshomaru sheathed Tenseiga.  Even though it could not cut in the conventional sense, the healing sword looked like any other katana of the time and so continuing to hold it might have provoked the guards further.  In any event, he hardly needed a sword to fight them off if they made it necessary.  Similarly, everyone else in the pack kept their hands away from their most obvious weapons, but remained ready to defend themselves.

            “Wait!  We’re here to help!” InuYasha called to the guards, raising his hands to show that they were empty, that he was not a threat.  Pointing to Kagome, he added: “We have a miko with us.  She felt demons attacking this village and we came to find out what was going on.”

            The guards recognized Kagome’s red-and-white Shinto miko garb and instantly took some comfort by the sight of it.  They also recognized Sango as a demon exterminator, Miroku as a Buddhist monk, and Shizu and Rin as apparently normal human women, but they weren’t so sure of what to make of InuYasha, Sesshomaru, Shippo, Shiori, Kirara, or Ah-Un, given that they were of obvious demonic lineage.  Kirara’s 1500-pound Battle Cat form, Ah-Un’s scaled bulk, and the intimidating, seven-foot height of a well-armed and armored Sesshomaru gave them special concern.

            Kagome saw the guards’ nervous eyes and where they were directed.  She stepped up to stand beside InuYasha and speak.  “Men, I _am_ a miko.  My name is Kagome and these are my friends,” she said, gesturing to InuYasha and the others.  “Please, lower your weapons and tell us what happened here.”

            The guards seemed to realize that they had been attacked by giant spiders and flying worms, not InuYasha or any of his friends, and they lowered their weapons as Kagome asked.  The leader of them stepped forward to differentiate himself from the rest and he made his respect to Kagome with a bow.  All around him, people he had personally witnessed being stabbed or mauled to death by a bloodthirsty demonic horde were up and running, totally alive again.  “Priestess, we were…we were _dead_ , but now we _live?_ ”

            “Yes,” Kagome answered, looking to Sesshomaru.  “This is Sesshomaru, Great Demon Lord of the West.  You may have heard of him.  He had the power to restore your lives and he used it.”

            The guard leader looked at Sesshomaru, instantly recognizing his name and his daiyoukai status, then fell to the ground to prostrate himself before Kagome and the demon lord responsible for returning them to life.  The other guards immediately followed suit.  “My men and I thank you, Priestess, and you, my lord.”

            By her great personal modesty, Kagome blanched at the sight of so many men practically worshipping her and she knelt down to tug on the guard leader’s arm and urge him back onto his feet.  “We wouldn’t have done anything else.  Lord _Sesshomaru_ wouldn’t have done anything else.  Now please, tell us what happened!”

            The guard leader and his men stood back up and the leader began to recount the ordeal of the past few hours.  “We were attacked overnight.  A horde of demons the likes we had never seen came at us and overwhelmed us.”  For the first time, he noticed that every single house around him had been burnt down.  Day had broken, telling him that some time had passed since the attack.  “We were killed quickly and I assume the entire village populace was killed, as well.  I suppose that there was a fire afterward.  But before all that, though, we saw a strange light coming from Lady Sayaka’s shrine.  I sent some men to investigate and…they didn’t come back.  Then the attack started.”

 _Shrine_.  The shrine the guard spoke of was likely the home of the miko that Kagome sensed fighting with Naraku.  “This shrine – where is it?” InuYasha asked urgently.

            The guard leader turned and pointed to the forested hill overlooking the village, close to the same direction from which InuYasha and pack had approached.  “It’s up there, in the forest.”

            InuYasha looked in the direction the guard leader pointed and saw the red torii of the shrine protruding out over the top of the forest canopy.  He turned to Kagome and the rest of the pack.  “Shall we go?”

            Kagome and the others nodded.  “Let’s,” Kagome said.

            The guard leader interjected to InuYasha and Kagome.  “Do you need us to come with you?”

            “No, thank you,” Kagome declined politely.  “The people here need your help more than we do.  Please, stay here and help them however you can.  Find any of the dead that Lord Sesshomaru missed and gather them in one place.  We should be back soon.”

            The guard leader nodded, bowed to Kagome in respect, and signaled for his men to follow him deeper into the fishing village so that they could begin their search for the remaining dead.  InuYasha, Kagome, and the others then left the village to begin their trek to the forest shrine of Lady Sayaka.  They found the path leading to it from the village and followed it until they reached the shrine’s stone steps, ascending them as quickly as they could. 

            Once the pack reached the top, InuYasha stopped, sniffing the air.  His nose wrinkled immediately.  “I smell blood…and _cum_ ,” he warned.

            Sesshomaru smelled the air as well and agreed.  “There were many males here, and some females,” he said, analyzing the scents flowing past him.  “All were engaged in some kind of sexuality.  The blood is all male, though.  It is fresher, so it came some time afterward.”

            The pack moved on to the shrine’s worship hall and the odor of semen grew stronger.  InuYasha opened the hall’s front door and the smell came pouring out from the darkened interior so strongly that even the pack’s human members with their relatively weaker senses could pick it up. “Goodness,” Miroku exclaimed quietly, stepping back away from the hall’s door.  “How many people did it take to make a smell like _this?”_

            “Dozens,” Sesshomaru answered, his demonic senses allowing him to discern individual scents within the wall of cum smell pouring over him.

            “Let’s check around back,” InuYasha said, sliding worship hall’s door shut and stepping off the hall’s front deck to make his way to the hall’s rear with the others following close behind.  Immediately, he spotted the mutilated bodies of the guards that Naraku had killed, apparently the ones that the village guard leader had sent to investigate the shrine, laying in the worship hall’s rear courtyard and his right hand found its way to Tetsuseiga’s hilt by instinct.  “More bodies,” he warned to his pack.  “Sesshomaru – Tenseiga, please.”

            Sesshomaru drew Tenseiga and resurrected the dead guards as InuYasha requested.  As the guards stirred to life, besides the sheer amount of blood on the ground, InuYasha could smell semen again, though it was noticeably different from that which he smelled inside the shrine’s worship hall.  “Naraku…and _Byakuya_ ,” he pronounced aloud, realizing that the scent of semen he had picked up was that of Naraku _and_ his latest, greatest incarnation.  That realization came with unsettling implications.  “Naraku and Byakuya were _here!_ ”

            “The bath house,” Sesshomaru pointed for InuYasha.  “Their scents emanate from there.”

            To InuYasha, the air smelled as if Naraku and Byakuya had gotten off a dozen times or more, and weaved into the scent of their release came that of a woman, or _women_.  He could only guess that Naraku and Byakuya hadn’t come here just to jack off and that the woman or women they found their pleasure with hadn’t been willing.  He knew that he and his friends hadn’t yet found the shrine’s priestess, the ‘Lady Sayaka’ the guard leader referred to, and as his friends helped the resurrected guards to their feet, he approached the bath house’s open door with mounting dread.

            InuYasha gripped Tetsuseiga’s hilt tightly as he stepped inside the bath house, ready to fight off Naraku or Byakuya if they were hiding inside to ambush him.  The first thing he saw was the reddish-pink demon flesh coating the walls, followed by the vat of demonic semen occupying most of the floor.  He swallowed thickly, feeling queasy as he looked to the right and spotted the lifeless, unclothed bodies of nine young women cemented to the bath house’s wall by the fleshy matter Naraku had left behind.  Each woman still had what looked like a three or four-foot-long demon cock shoved down their throats.

            “Oh, _shit!_ ” InuYasha cursed, leaping back from the bath house in utter revulsion.  Sesshomaru noted the look on InuYasha’s face and entered the bath house to see for himself.  His golden eyes remained impassive and he did not flinch at what he saw, outwardly unaffected by it by having seen quite a few equally depraved things over his long life.  He approached the situation more matter-of-factly.  “Purification of this place is necessary,” he concluded.  “Priestess Kagome, your abilities are needed.”

            At this point, Kagome and the others had been talking with the guards that Sesshomaru revived with Tenseiga, telling them of the situation down in the fishing village and of the situation of the other guards.  Kagome heard InuYasha curse and Sesshomaru call for her, and so she joined them in front of the bath house.

            Before entering the demon-tainted bath, Kagome saw that InuYasha’s face had nearly drained of color, while Sesshomaru’s appeared even more stoic than usual.  “How bad is it?” she asked.

            InuYasha shook his head.  “ _Bad_ ,” he replied.  “You probably can’t ‘un-see’ what’s in there.”

            Bravely, Kagome stepped into the bath house and faced the horrors inside head-on.  Her ethereal blue eyes hardened and her lips curled downward in disgust; by the rivers of semen that had dried upon the dead women’s inner thighs, it was clear to her that Naraku or Byakuya had raped all of them.  She assumed that they had died by choking to death on the tentacles still occupying their mouths and throats.  “InuYasha, Sesshomaru – please stand back,” Kagome warned.  “This might hurt you.”

            InuYasha and Sesshomaru backed away from the bath as Kagome asked, and Kagome closed her eyes and began to focus her purifying reiki.  A brilliant, electric blue corona of light formed around her, her body seeming to radiate it as a star in the night sky.  She gave up a mighty, womanly shout and shoved her hands out away from her as her purifying corona _detonated_ , sweeping out from her body to wash over the demonic flesh covering the entire interior of the bath house and erase it from existence. 

            By Kagome’s purification, the bath pool that Naraku had transformed into pure semen evaporated completely and the semen still in the lungs of Sayaka’s junior mikos evaporated, as well.  The tentacles filling the girls’ mouths and throats ceased to exist and once the demon flesh holding them to the bath house’s wooden wall disappeared, their bodies collapsed to the purified wooden floor.  “Sesshomaru!  Please use Tenseiga!” Kagome called behind her.

            Swiftly, Sesshomaru entered the restored bath house and swept Tenseiga over all nine dead priestesses at once.  They began to draw breath again, their lungs no longer filled with Naraku’s vile fluid, and their glassy eyes filled with life as they sat up upon the bath house floor in a daze.  All nine women were still naked from their ‘worship’ service the night before and Sesshomaru stepped back outside so as not to be accused of any lechery.  Kagome spotted nine bathing yukatas made of white silk hanging from wooden posts along the bath house wall.  She handed the yukatas to the women and helped them dress, as necessary.

            Having been alive for only a few seconds, the junior mikos were highly disoriented and their vision was still blurred.  As they looked at Kagome, they could make out only the red-and-white silk of her miko garb and ask: “Sayaka-sama?”

            “No, I’m not Sayaka,” Kagome disaffirmed.  “But I am a miko.  My name is Kagome and I come from Edo.  I felt a demon attack your shrine.  What happened here?”

            “It…it was horrible, Kagome-sama,” one young priestess said, rubbing her eyes to try and get them focus.  “First, there was just one demon.  He called himself ‘Byakuya.’  As we were getting ready to bathe here, Lady Sayaka felt him approaching the bath and she shot him with an enchanted arrow.  She was about to kill him when the other demon appeared.”

            “Naraku?” Kagome asked.

            “Yes!  That was his name,” the junior miko said.  “He appeared here, inside the bath, taking us by surprise.  He grabbed us and threatened to kill us if Sayaka-sama didn’t surrender.  She did, and then…and _then!_ ”

            The miko began to weep softly and Kagome moved to console her.  “You don’t have to say it.  I know what happened next,” she comforted.  “Where is Sayaka now?”

            The young woman Kagome held composed herself and looked around the bath house, seeing only Kagome and her fellow junior mikos.  “She’s not in here.  Is she outside?”

            “No, we haven’t seen her, outside or anywhere,” Kagome answered.

            “Then…then Naraku must have taken her!”

            By this time, with the bath house purified and the women inside dressed as completely as possible, the rest of the pack had gathered around the bath house’s door.  Rather bluntly, Sesshomaru spoke: “Many other men were here recently.  Dozens at once,” he stated.  “We smelled their seed.” 

            The junior priestesses hung their heads to look at the floor, as if in shame.  “Yes,” one of them admitted.  “To raise money to keep the shrine open, we…we prostitute ourselves.”

            “Oh, Kami,” Kagome hushed.  Similarly, Sango, Shizu, Shiori, and Rin – all the other female members of the pack – felt sympathy for the mikos’ situation.  Conversely, the men felt acutely self-conscious and ashamed of their own sexual tendencies, especially Miroku.  Miroku knew that once, long ago in his more lecherous days, he himself might have been one of the mikos’ ‘customers.’

            “We’re sorry,” InuYasha said.  “Is that why Naraku and Byakuya came here?  For pleasure?”

            “Well, no.  I don’t think so…” one of the young women said.  “When Naraku appeared here, he was…he was… _urk!_ ”

            The woman’s voice ended in a terrible, gasping squelch and she clutched at her chest and stomach.  The other women did the same, falling to their sides on the bath house floor and beginning to writhe around as if in terrible pain.  Kagome shot to her feet and backed away from them as the first of them began coughing blood.

            “ _Ku, ku, ku,_ ” a dark, malevolent voice laughed, laughing directly into the minds of InuYasha, Kagome, and everyone else in the pack – Naraku’s.  “ _I think that’s quite enough information for now.”_

The whole pack tensed at the sound of Naraku’s voice, whether it was real or imagined.  Shizu and Shiori, having never heard it before, were especially revolted.  _“Naraku!_ ” InuYasha roared.  “Where are you?”

            “ _Nowhere near, and at the same time, everywhere_.”

            The writhing and convulsions of Sayaka’s young priestesses became more violent with each passing second, bloody foam streaming from their mouths.  Naraku was doing _something_ to them somehow.  “Naraku, stop it!  _Stop it!_ ” InuYasha demanded.

            “ _Stop?  I haven’t even begun!_ ”

            One of Sayaka’s young women stiffened and gave up an awful, deafening scream as underneath her white yukata, her chest and abdomen abruptly split open from her navel to all the way to her throat, instantly soaking her yukata with blood.  Some horrible insectoid _thing,_ like some kind of demented blend of a spider and a mantis, shoved its pincer-like appendages out of the hideous wound it made and clawed its way out of the miko’s body.  It was coated in her blood and entrails and once it wriggled its way free of her, it launched itself at Kagome with blinding speed. 

            Kagome shrieked and with his half-demon reflexes, InuYasha sprang into action, shoving an arm between Kagome and the freshly ‘hatched’ monster, letting it sink it fangs into him instead of her.  He howled in pain and rage as it bit down into him hard, punching through the sleeve of his Fire-Rat haori to reach deep into skin and muscle over and over, and by grasping its blood-soaked thorax, he ripped it off of him to throw it against the bath house’s far wall as hard as he could.

            The spider/mantis monster hit the wall and fell to the floor, then righted itself and leapt right back at Kagome, its spindly appendages spread wide as it sought to copulate with her face.  This time, before it could reach her, Sesshomaru stepped in to draw Bakusaiga and cleave it neatly in half.  Her vital organs destroyed, the miko whose chest it had burst out of convulsed briefly and grew still as death took her all over again. 

            Similar monsters began ‘hatching’ from the remaining women, killing them gruesomely in the process.  Naraku had implanted a dozen in each woman, resulting in over a hundred of his horrifying creations exiting their gestational homes in less than thirty seconds, creating an utter bloodbath.  InuYasha turned to shove Kagome and his other friends out of the bath house.  “Let’s get out here!  _Move!_ ” he ordered harshly.

            Given that InuYasha and his friends had turned around, the guards that Naraku had killed and left in the courtyard between the shrine’s worship hall and bath house, the same ones that Sesshomaru had revived just a few minutes earlier, stood before them.  Like Sayaka’s junior mikos, they began to fall to the ground and convulse in agony as the monsters that Naraku had planted in them surreptitiously began to stir, chewing their way out of their bodies ravenously to cause as much blood-spewing damage as possible.  Behind InuYasha and his pack, the monsters that had hatched from the mikos’ bodies began to stalk out of the bath house.

            Beyond being just the hosts for Naraku’s parasitic monsters, the mikos and guards that the parasites had burst out of responded to Naraku’s telepathic control, serving him as his pawns in an abominable state of un-death.  With their blood and what remained of their internal organs pouring out of them, spilling out onto the ground, they rose to their feet slowly and in eerie unison, animated by Naraku’s dark magic.  Their flesh paled and their eyes glowed bright magenta, the light of the Shikon no Tama applied to a terrible purpose.

            “Oh, God…Oh, _God!_ ” Kagome cried as the priestesses Sesshomaru had just revived, the same ones she had just been speaking with just moments before, began shambling out of the bath house and stumbling down its front steps directly toward her and her friends.  The guards, now undead and in Naraku’s thrall as well, began to rise and advance in a similar manner.  With nine undead mikos behind them, as many as twenty undead guards in front of them, and more than a hundred insectoid monsters scattered about, InuYasha and his pack were outnumbered and completely surrounded.

            Everyone readied their weapons.  InuYasha drew Tetsuseiga and Sesshomaru gripped his Bakusaiga, while Sango dropped Hiraikotsu to unsheath her katana and Miroku clenched his hands on his enchanted staff.  Shippo summoned two swords made of his ‘Hard Fire’ into his hands while Kirara and Ah-Un crouched low, preparing to pounce like the four-legged animals they were.  With some fright, Shizu, Shiori, Rin, the relatively most defenseless members of the pack, adjusted their positions so that they stood behind their better-armed friends.  To his credit, Jaken stood at Sesshomaru’s side, not behind him, and readied his Staff of Two Heads so as to fight alongside his lord.

            “InuYasha!  What do we do?” Sango asked, not taking her eyes off the guards and monsters in front of her.

            To InuYasha’s mind, at that moment, there was only one option left.  “ _Attack!_ ” he snarled.  He leapt forward to slash out at the undead guards and demonic mantis spiders before him with Tetsuseiga in one hand, launching his Blades of Blood at them with the other.  Sango followed close behind him, using her katana to cut down whatever he missed.  Shippo and Miroku stood fast to protect Shizu, Shiori, Rin, and Jaken from anything that got through.

 

            Behind them, Sesshomaru used his blinding demon speed and peerless swordsmanship with Bakusaiga to destroy all nine undead mikos and the monsters that had come from them in mere seconds.  He found, as InuYasha and Sango did with the guards, that the only way to put them down permanently was to decapitate them.  What few monsters that Sesshomaru missed were incinerated by a gout of flame from Jaken’s magic staff.

            Silence fell over the courtyard as the last monsters and possessed humans fell to InuYasha, Sesshomaru, or Sango’s swords.  The silence ‘broke’ when Naraku’s telepathic voice spoke once again.  “ _Very good,_ ” Naraku praised to InuYasha and pack.  “ _I knew that relatively small number would not trouble you._ ”

            “Fuck you, Naraku!” InuYasha spat crudely, watching his surroundings for any other surprises Naraku might have left behind.  “You’re a rapist, you’re a murderer, and you’re a fucking _coward!_   Are you too afraid to face us yourself?”

            “ _Hardly,_ ” Naraku chuckled.  “ _I simply enjoy the violence.  And there’s a good deal more for you to have right now._ ”

            Everyone began to hear awful screams and cries coming from the fishing village downhill from the shrine.  By their superhuman hearing, the members of the pack with demonic lineage could hear it with the best clarity and they immediately wished they _couldn’t_ hear so well.  They realized that before he left, Naraku had infected every single person in the village with his parasites, turning the whole place into a massive trap for them to stumble upon.  Every single person that Sesshomaru had revived had just died all over again.

            Looking at the headless bodies of the undead guards and priestesses he and his friends had just re-slain, InuYasha’s thoughts once more turned to saving lives.  Breathing hard, he turned to his daiyoukai brother.  “Sesshomaru, use Tenseiga.”

            Dutifully, Sesshomaru placed a hand on Tenseiga’s hilt.  This time, the healing sword remained still and silent in its sheath, and no servants of the underworld appeared to him.  He stood visibly shaken by the knowledge dawning on him.  Apparently, Tenseiga could be used on a person only _once_ and he knew exactly what that meant for Rin.  His precious, beloved, irreplaceable Rin.  “Tenseiga...does not respond.”

            “ _What?_ ” InuYasha exclaimed.

            “It doesn’t _respond!_ ” Sesshomaru repeated, snarling now.  Ever since he had used Tenseiga to revive Rin when he found her mauled to death in a forest all those years ago, the healing sword had been a token of reassurance.  Once Rin began following him, then travelling with him, then growing up into a beautiful woman and capturing his heart, he thought that if he ever failed to protect her, he could simply use Tenseiga to bring her back to him.  Now, that reassurance was shattered.

            “Sesshomaru…you mean we can’t bring these people back again?” InuYasha asked. 

            “Yes.  They are dead.  _Permanently,_ now.” Sesshomaru answered, sneering helplessly at the gore around him.

            InuYasha knew that Sesshomaru had used Tenseiga to revive Rin once already and he had arrived at generally the same thoughts that the daiyoukai did.  He looked at Rin and saw that terrifying realization on her face, as well.  Instinctively, Kagome reached out to the younger woman, pulling her close to comfort her as best she could.  Gloating by the misery he had incited, Naraku spoke again.  “ _Ku, ku, ku_.  _If I were you,_ _Sesshomaru, I’d be very, very careful with Rin, from now on!_ ”

            “ _Shut up!_ ” InuYasha snapped at Naraku while Sesshomaru glowered intensely, looking at Rin as Kagome held her.  “Shut the fuck up!”

            Naraku laughed in evil pleasure.  “ _Very well.  I shall leave you be for now.  But remember, I am always watching.  Have fun with the villagers.”_

            The screaming in the fishing village downhill from the shrine had stopped now, a deathly silence hanging in the air.  Hurriedly, InuYasha and his pack then left the worship hall’s rear courtyard and all the dead bodies in it to gather in front of the shrine, in a grassy clearing where they had a view of the village below.  The members of the pack with the best eyesight could see hundreds, _thousands_ of the insectoid monsters like the ones that had hatched from the mikos and shrine guards earlier swarming around in the streets.  Worse, they could see the people that they had hatched from shambling back and forth aimlessly, their torsos split wide open and drooling all manners of gore onto the ground.  No one was spared – Naraku had infected men, women, and children alike with his demonic parasites.  Suddenly, at Naraku’s mental command, every single monster and undead thrall turned to begin moving in one direction: directly toward InuYasha and his pack.

            “Naraku _knew_ this would happen,” InuYasha scowled.  “He knew we would come here.  He killed everyone, knowing we would use Tenseiga to revive them, and once we did, it caused… _this_.”

            “There’s…there’s too many of them!” Shippo cried, gripping his Hard Fire swords desperately.  “What do we _do?_ ”

            “If those people and those _things_ get out into the countryside, it’ll be chaos,” Miroku warned.  “InuYasha, we can’t let any of them escape.  Not one.”

            InuYasha’s hand tightened on Tetsuseiga’s hilt.  “The Meido,” he whispered, disbelieving what he was thinking of.  “We…we send them into the Meido.”

            Everyone was silent.  To send the fishing village and the people into the Meido would be a death sentence for them.  InuYasha looked to Kagome, as if seeking guidance from her.  Her heart hammering in her throat, she answered: “Do it,” she said, giving her approval for InuYasha to send an entire village into the nether world and effectively commit mass murder.

            InuYasha nodded, then gripped Tetsuseiga with both hands and lifted it high above his head, pointing it toward the sky.  His friends backed away for safety.  “ _Meido…_ ” he chanted, Tetsuseiga’s blade turning pitch black and becoming a window to another dimension, brimming with stars, nebulae, and entire galaxies.  “ _Zangetsuha!”_

            As InuYasha scythed Tetsuseiga downward, its empowered blade cut through reality itself, moving through an arc that encompassed the entirety of the fishing village below him.  That arc became a _Meido_ , a portal to the nether world of Death itself.  Every building, house, undead villager, and insectoid monster before InuYasha fell into the Meido’s cosmic maw and once the Meido closed, it was as if they had been erased from existence.  The Meido swallowed not only the village, but untold tons of the land it had been built upon, leaving behind a vast, crescent-shaped crater in the earth.  One edge of the crater intersected with the sea and immediately, seawater came roaring into it to fill it up.

            InuYasha lowered himself to a knee as he watched the ocean’s water flow into the space where the fishing village had stood.  He hung his head, his ivory bangs covering his eyes as he began to weep silently.  Naraku was always one step ahead of him and his pack.  He thought of the young mikos that they had just killed and wondered: how long would it be until the same thing happened to one of his female friends?  What could he do?  _What?_

            Kagome knelt on the grass behind him and put her arms around InuYasha, crying as well while the others looked on.  “Damn you, Naraku.  Damn you,” Kagome wept, burying her face into InuYasha’s shoulder to weep along with him.

            Composing himself somewhat, InuYasha cleared his throat.  “We should move on, back to Edo,” he said to his pack.  “We need to get back there as soon as we can.  Who knows what’s happened there since we’ve been gone.”

            “Right,” Kagome agreed, helping InuYasha to his feet.  She looked to Sesshomaru and his small group, Rin most of all.  “Are you coming with us?”

            “Yes,” Sesshomaru replied, not hesitating for a second.  He glanced at the small bay where the fishing village had been.  The situation with Naraku was escalating rapidly and he knew that they needed to find a way to resolve it soon.  “We need each other’s help, now more than ever.”

            Rin’s face became visibly happier at the prospect of spending more time around InuYasha, Kagome, and the others.  She knew that she would feel safer with both Sesshomaru and InuYasha near, and she hoped that they would be able to find time for the ‘proposition’ that she and Sesshomaru had made to InuYasha.  Haunted by the knowledge that Tenseiga couldn’t save her a second time, she found solace in her intense sexual thoughts of her beloved daiyoukai and his handsome hanyou brother.  She even hoped that she might get a shot at Miroku or Shippo, if Sango and Shiori were willing to share.

            For her own part, Kagome’s spirits were buoyed in much the same way.  “We’ll be glad to have you,” she said to Sesshomaru and Rin.  “We’ll even be glad to have _you_ , Jaken.”

            Jaken gave a nervous half-smile and bowed in appreciation.  “Yes, thank you, milady.”

            InuYasha sheathed Tetsuseiga.  “We should go,” he suggested to his pack.  Pulling the map he had shown to Sesshomaru the night before out of his haori and unfolding it, he analyzed the distance between his pack and Edo.  “It’s morning, now.  If we move at a decent speed, we can reach Edo by evening.”

            At InuYasha’s command, the pack readied itself for travel.  Before Shippo transformed into his Fire-Fox, though, InuYasha directed him to use his magic fire to incinerate the bodies of the guards and mikos they had left in the shrine’s rear courtyard.  Tenseiga couldn’t do anything for them now and besides not having the time to bury all twenty or thirty of them, InuYasha wanted to be completely certain they wouldn’t rise again and threaten anyone else.  He and the rest of the pack then configured themselves for flight and took to the sky to fly west toward Edo, leaving the destroyed fishing village and its abandoned shrine behind.

            Somewhere, Naraku smiled with sadistic intent.  Their ordeal had only begun!

 

**-To be continued-**


	9. Reconciliation with a Priestess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byakuya and Sayaka grapple with the events at the Shinto priestess’ shrine, then get wet and wild with each other in the bath of Naraku’s dark castle.  Meanwhile, Naraku makes ready to bring a certain other incarnation of his back to life, one even sexier than Byakuya…

 

            A few minutes after Naraku left him and Sayaka alone in Sayaka’s demonically corrupted bath house, a nude, cum-drenched Byakuya summoned the will to move and he rose from the bath house’s demon flesh covered floor.  He stood up unsteadily, heavy globs of Naraku’s semen slipping down his bare, muscular body.  His long, sable mane was completely saturated with the stuff, as well, the creamy liquid aftermath of the depraved ordeal that he and his master had subjected Sayaka and her girls to. 

            As evidence of the sexual crime he had committed, Byakuya’s now-softened cock still glistened with a heavy coat of Sayaka’s vaginal fluids.  At the same time, she still carried a large amount of his powerful demon seed in her belly.  That seed had found her egg and with his demonic senses, Byakuya could perceive the life now growing within her womb.  With regret roiling in his cobalt blue eyes, he looked down at Sayaka as she sat unconscious in the pool of spring water turned pure semen that Naraku had left behind.  With great revulsion, he then looked over at the lovely elder miko’s younger priestesses as Naraku’s demonic flesh continued to bond their nude, lifeless bodies to the bath house wall, meaty tentacle cocks still twitching and oozing in their mouths, pussies, and asses.

            Naraku had killed the young women by injecting his semen directly into their lungs, sharing their drowning deaths with Sayaka telepathically so as to inflict maximum psychological damage on her.  Even if he hadn’t drowned the girls, they would have simply asphyxiated on the tentacle cocks clogging their mouths and throats.  In a fit of uncontrollable anger, Byakuya attacked Naraku for it, as Naraku’s control over him failed briefly, but violently by the outrage he felt the moment the women died.  The wind demon could do nothing for them now, though, as he knew that Naraku would not allow him to disturb their bodies in any way.  Naraku wanted InuYasha and his friends to find the mikos exactly as they were, to see just one of the many horrible things he planned to do to _them._

            Byakuya recognized that even though he had attacked Naraku, Naraku charged him with securing Sayaka anyway.  Clearly, the oni lord knew that he would not defy him further.  Sayaka and her purifying reiki were key to allowing Naraku to survive his Shikon-induced illness, and Naraku’s survival was his own.  Therefore, besides being mentally conditioned to serve Naraku, if he wanted to live, he would do as the demon lord ordered and take Sayaka to his dark castle. 

            Fighting his own disgust, the male wind demon stepped down into the semen pool and reached into the hot, pulsating reproductive fluid to scoop Sayaka’s naked body up and out of it, taking her into his arms.  His youkai strength allowed him to hold her weight with ease and he pulled her to his bare chest, finding some small comfort in the warmth and softness of her body pressing against his own.  Of course, he found not only comfort, but sexual pleasure, as well, his animalistic demonic urges still pining for her by the breeding heat. 

            Between his thighs, Byakuya felt his cock beginning to swell back up out of reflex; Sayaka was strong, healthy, and utterly beautiful.  Her smooth, creamy white skin concealed a sleek and very powerful female musculature, clearly built from years of disciplined nutrition and physical training.  Her breasts were quite impressive, as well, each one far more than even Byakuya’s large male hands could cover.  Beyond her physical beauty, the miko was _fertile_ and now she carried Byakuya’s child, the ultimate purpose of the wind demon’s breeding heat accomplished.  Consequently, he still felt highly attracted to her.  By Sayaka’s great spiritual power, though, Byakuya predicted that when she woke up, there would be Hell to pay and he was not certain that he would survive her wrath.

            Cradling Sayaka carefully, Byakuya stepped out of the semen pool with a heavy, dripping slosh. Using his limited telekinesis, he willed one of his magic origami cranes to slip out of a pocket in his cum-soaked haori as it lay crumpled up on the possessed bath house’s fleshy floor.  The crane rose into the air and floated out of the bath house through its open front door, enlarging in size until it reached a length of ten feet and a wingspan of fifteen.  Byakuya stepped out of the bath house to lay Sayaka into the crane, then returned to grab both his own clothes and her red-and-white miko outfit.  He didn’t bother to dress either her or himself, though, simply tossing their clothes into the crane in a heap.  Both their clothes and their bodies were still drenched and dripping with Naraku’s thick white seed.  Their clothes were in dire need of a wash and their bodies were in similarly dire need of a bath, in actual water this time.

            Byakuya remembered that the blast from one of Sayaka’s purifying arrows had ripped his sword from his hand and cast it off into the forest outside the shrine.  He still had the sword’s scabbard in his possession and he held it upright, pointing its narrow opening toward the sky.  Dozens of yards away, his sword lay motionless in the place upon the mossy forest floor where it had landed.  Once Byakuya lifted its scabbard to the sky, it vibrated visibly and rose into the air, summoned by the scabbard’s silent call.  It leveled with the ground and flew hilt-first through the forest at great speed, stopping when it flew over Byakuya’s head.  It then oriented itself vertically, its hilt pointing at the sky, and descended to slide perfectly into its scabbard.

            Reunited with his sword, Byakuya stepped into his giant origami crane, kneeling beside Sayaka inside it and ensuring that their weight was distributed evenly along its centerline, so as to avoid unfavorable flight characteristics.  Like his predecessor Kagura once might have, he summoned the wind to sweep through the courtyard between the bath house and worship hall and lift the crane into the air.  The crane twirled in a slow, horizontal spin as it climbed and once it was high enough, Byakuya willed the wind to begin to push at its tail, directing it into fast, level, easterly flight.

            His cum-soaked hair weighed down and fluttering only slightly in the oncoming wind, Byakuya looked over one side of his crane and saw what remained of Sayaka’s village as he flew away from it.  It was as a sea of flame along the dark, nighttime shore, a corpse-filled nightmare for InuYasha and his friends to happen upon.  Before he left, Naraku had implanted a ‘surprise’ in each and every dead villager’s body, a surprise to be revealed in the event that Sesshomaru used his Tenseiga to resurrect them.  For his part in all of it, Byakuya felt only guilt and he looked down at Sayaka herself as she lay unconscious at his side.  Whether Naraku had possessed him to do it or not, he had raped her and impregnated her, to say nothing of what he had done to her junior priestesses.

            If Sayaka didn’t kill him first, Byakuya vowed to himself that he would do everything in his power to somehow redeem himself to her.

~~~~

**(Soundtrack: Savatage – Hall of the Mountain King)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdGD3Ukb3Q0** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdGD3Ukb3Q0)

            A few minutes before, Naraku vanished to leave Byakuya and Sayaka alone in the miko’s bath house, disappearing by teleportation so as not to be followed by any observer whose presence he had not detected.  His rejuvenated demonic body protected by one of his translucent magenta energy barriers, he reappeared over the Pacific Ocean ten miles offshore from the fishing village where Sayaka’s shrine was located.  He then began to fly further east.  Covering twenty miles of open sea in around fifteen minutes, he approached the rocky island upon which he had conjured his castle fortress.

            Naraku had formed his island using his evil, Shikon-fueled magic, excavating countless tons of sediment and rock from the ocean floor and piling it up, solidifying it into a foundation that could support his castle.  Given the position of his island so far offshore, the ocean in the area was around 700 feet deep and so starting at the ocean floor, Naraku had built his new landmass 800 feet tall so that it rose sharply out of the sea as an ominous, 100-foot-tall, half-mile wide monolith.  His castle, a copy of the one that he had usurped from the human lord Kagewaki Hitomi, sat sprawled out atop the island, its many ornate component buildings cloaked in a dark violet aura of demonic gloom.  By positioning his castle far out to sea, Naraku sought to escape attention from anyone on land while serving his own vanity at the same time.

            A thousand-strong army, what had once been the castle’s defense force, stood in silent, totally motionless formations outside the castle walls, a reception for their dark master.  Naraku had killed the soldiers when he took over the castle but kept their bodies around as horrifying outdoor decoration, trophies to his twisted personality.  Their skin, muscle, and internal organs having long since rotted away, they were as skeletons clad in 16th-century Japanese armor, their bones held together and kept upright not by cartilage and tendon, but by Naraku’s invisible, sinister power. 

            Naraku flew over his skeleton army and descended to the castle’s central courtyard where another, smaller group of skeleton soldiers had assembled.  By the ‘programming’ he had conferred upon them, they bowed silently to make their respect to him and he strode past them to enter his castle by its front shoji door.  Inside the castle, more skeletons stood throughout its darkened halls in a macabre state of still life.  Clad in fine silken kimonos and the like, they were the skeletons of the castle’s highest-ranking servants, advisors, and other well-to-do staff.  They remained in the very places where they had perished when Naraku’s neurotoxic miasma swept through the castle as a cloudy violet gaseous flood, killing them instantly. 

            Naraku had since used his dark magic to program the dead servants into complex, repeating routines, so that besides being obviously dead, they looked as if they were going about their usual business.  Groups of them stood in the castle’s halls facing one another, as if in conversation, while others shambled about from place to place, carrying bundles of clothing that no one would ever wear, or bushels of long-stale rice that no one would ever eat.  Still others sat at small tables to sip from empty teacups with lipless mouths while poring over old, decayed scrolls with empty eye sockets.

            Initially, Naraku kept the bodies around for his own demented amusement, but they had since come to serve him as visual reminders of what awaited him if he didn’t resolve the situation with the illness that constant, long-term exposure to the Shikon no Tama had caused him - _death_ , and an especially pitiful one, at that.  Left unchecked, his illness would cause his demonic body to eat itself alive from the inside out.  The oni lord suspected that his hideous appearance when he made himself known to Sayaka was hardly the final stage of it.

            Naraku’s den lay at the back of the castle, just a few dozen feet from the island’s cliff edge.  It had been the private chamber of the castle’s previous lord, but Naraku kept it sparsely furnished.  The only objects upon the shoji-walled room’s hardwood floor were a few standing lanterns and a single sitting mat.  The dim light of the waning moon shone into the den through a wide, open window built into the den’s back wall, and Naraku entered the den to approach it.  He stood before the window and gazed out over the sea before him, listening to the sound of it crashing against his island’s jagged cliffs.

            A male’s voice, high, breathy, and quavering with thinly-restrained psychosis, spoke into Naraku’s mind, breaking Naraku’s perception of the ocean sound flowing over him.  “ _My, Naraku, you had quite the adventure, tonight.  You are one truly sick fuck - I like that.”_  

            The voice was that of _Magatsuhi_ , the evil demon that resided within the Shikon no Tama.  Whereas Naraku could wreak psychological havoc on InuYasha and his friends by speaking into their minds at any time, Magatsuhi could do much the same to _him_.  Naraku prided himself on the terrible things he had done, the people he had murdered or raped, especially the women, and the pleasure he took from it all, but the concentration of sheer malevolence surrounding Magatsuhi gave even _him_ pause.

            Naraku summoned the Shikon no Tama into a palm and raised it up to contemplate it.  “Magatsuhi,” Naraku spoke aloud, regarding the evil spirit dwelling within the jewel and reciting its name with some amount of respect, even admiration for the sheer blackness of it.  “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

            The Shikon jewel’s aura flared and a foul mist flowed out of the jewel to coalesce and manifest itself as a disembodied face – Magatsuhi’s.  Magatsuhi’s spectral form was as a grotesque Kabuki mask that floated in the air before Naraku.  One of his tear-shaped, bloodshot eyes was crossed vertically with a long, thin scar, a scar made by Sesshomaru’s accursed Tenseiga, and his violet lips curled upward in a depraved grin.  “Oh, the pleasure is all _mine_ ,” Magatsuhi said, audibly this time, as opposed to telepathically.  His voice was slightly warped and distorted to Naraku’s ears, as it originated from the dimension within the Shikon jewel and lost some fidelity as it traveled from one reality to another.  “You may not have sensed me, but I was along for the ride, tonight.  I saw what you saw, felt what you felt, and that miko slut’s ass felt very, very good.”

            “Enjoyed that, did you?” Naraku smiled, the memory of Sayaka’s tight ass sucking him off into messy orgasm still fresh in his mind.

            “Absolutely.  I like nothing better than the suffering of a priestess, especially a sexy one,” Magatsuhi said.  “More importantly, though, her power healed you.  You’re looking much better and all the growths on your body are gone.  Are you in much pain, now?”

            “Very little,” Naraku answered, raising an arm and flexing it experimentally to measure its strength.  “But that will change.”

            “Yes, and you’re needing more reiki than ever,” Magatsuhi noted.  “Sayaka withstood the drain, but only just.  She may not be able to put up with it, next time.  You’re going to need another, even more powerful miko soon.  Only a few names come to my mind.”

            “Kagome…and Kikyo,” Naraku concluded.

            “What do you plan to do?” Magatsuhi asked.

            Naraku’s red eyes narrowed as he weighed his options.  “Though it ended up being a lot of fun for the both of us, saving Byakuya from Sayaka earlier tonight was risky,” he said to the demon spirit before him. “Sayaka alone was powerful enough to resist Byakuya and had I not taken her by surprise, she could have given me a fair bit of trouble, enough to have forced me to withdraw.  Kagome and Kikyo are even stronger than Sayaka and they have powerful friends in InuYasha, Sesshomaru, and the rest, so if I were to send Byakuya to capture either of them, he would not be likely to survive.”

            “With InuYasha, Sesshomaru, and the others, Kagome has a small army around her at all times,” Magatsuhi said.  “However, Kikyo travels with only that taijiya, Kohaku.  She would be the easier target.”

            “True.  But Kikyo may be even more powerful than Kagome, and Kohaku isn’t a boy anymore, but a man.  Together, they are lethal,” Naraku replied.  “Against them, Byakuya will need help.”

            “Oh, send _me_ with him,” Magatsuhi almost begged.  “I owe Kohaku a slow, painful death for when he used that chain-scythe of his on me.  I’ll kill him, take his jewel shard, then _eat him_.   After that, Byakuya and I can capture Kikyo.  We’ll accomplish three goals at once.”

            “That’s tempting, but spawning your last body accelerated my illness and I seem to remember Sesshomaru dispatching you with ease,” Naraku denied.  “No, you will remain with me.  Instead, I will send with Byakuya a certain, other incarnation of mine.”

            “ _What_ incarnation?” Magatsuhi protested.  “Byakuya is the only one you have.”

            Naraku gave an insidious chuckle.  “For the moment.  Come with me.”

            Intrigued, Magatsuhi dissolved his spectral form back into the Shikon jewel and Naraku absorbed the jewel back into his body, so as to carry Magatsuhi’s spirit with him.  The demon lord then turned away from his den’s ocean-view window and walked to a square trap-door in the den’s hardwood floor.  It flung open by his telekinetic command and he levitated himself down though it into his castle’s labyrinthine underbelly.  The door then slammed shut, sealing him in pitch darkness.

~~~~

 

            After flying over open sea atop his giant paper crane for around half an hour, Byakuya saw his master’s gloomy, monolithic island castle appear on the horizon below him.  He felt some relief at the sight, knowing that he could soon bathe and rid himself and Sayaka of all the semen still clinging to them.  He also felt trepidation, not only for what Sayaka might say or do to him when she awoke, but for what _Naraku_ might say or do.  The wind demon had attacked his creator openly and brazenly, as his predecessor Kagura once might have, and he knew that the act would not go unpunished.

            Byakuya leaned forward in his crane, shifting his weight along its centerline and causing it to descend toward Naraku’s castle.  Once he was inside its reach, Naraku’s magenta energy barrier reformed around the island, preventing anyone else from entering or leaving.  He landed in the same courtyard where Naraku himself had several minutes before, and he took Sayaka into his arms again to step out of his crane.  Immediately, he found himself and the unconscious miko he held surrounded by a dozen of Naraku’s hideous skeleton solders.  The soldiers’ jaws dropped open and snapped closed in threatening chatter as they reached out to Sayaka with their bony hands, as if to take her from him.

            Byakuya bristled at the prospect of giving Sayaka over to the skeletons.  Even if she wasn’t exactly his wife, intended mate, or whatever InuYasha and Kagome regarded each other as, she carried his child and his demonic instincts urged him to protect her, even if his survival meant allowing Naraku to drain her of her reiki on a regular basis.  “Get _back_ ,” he sneered dangerously.  “I’ll be keeping her with _me_ , thank you very much.”

            By the limited intelligence that Naraku had granted them, the skeletons seemed to understand Byakuya’s resolve and the lethal intent behind it.  They shrank before him, allowing him to pass.  Holding Sayaka close to his chest, the male wind demon strode past them and through the castle’s shoji doorway, proceeding directly to the nearest bath chamber.  At his extrasensory command, his giant paper crane followed after him, carrying his clothes, Sayaka’s clothes, and his sword.  It folded its triangular wings so as to fit through the castle’s door and the halls beyond it.  Byakuya and Sayaka were still drenched with Naraku’s semen, and only after he had cleaned them up and washed their clothes would the wind demon seek out his dark master.

            The bath chamber that Byakuya came upon was a room of shoji walls built around an onsen of mineral-rich spring water.  It was lit with four standing lanterns, one in each corner of the chamber, their flickering glow giving the clean, steamy bath a quiet, relaxing atmosphere.  Ordinarily, onsen were natural freshwater outlets for geothermal energy, found throughout Japan’s home islands due to their volcanic activity.  However, the artificial nature of Naraku’s island and its position out at sea meant that the freshwater in the spring and the energy heating it were both of Naraku’s creation.  The water rose up into the spring from a reservoir deep within the island, heated and purified in a practical application of the demon lord’s dark magic.

            Byakuya stepped down into the bath to lower himself and Sayaka into its waist-deep water.  His crane entered the bath chamber with him and it settled onto its floor to shrink to its former tiny size, leaving the clothes and sword it carried laying on the floor within easy reach from the water.  Byakuya sighed in relief at the water’s cleanliness and warmth as it began to dissolve Naraku’s semen from his skin.  The bath had an underwater shelf for several people to sit comfortably upon and Byakuya sat Sayaka down upon it, laying her back so that she reclined in a stable position against the bath’s wooden edge.

            The male wind demon retrieved a wash bucket that sat on the bath’s edge.  It contained soap and a few washcloths, which Byakuya used to form a soapy lather and begin to clean himself of Naraku’s seed.  He immersed himself completely underwater to clean out his long, glossy black hair, leaving it as a sopping wet but finally clean mass that clung to his bare back when he resurfaced.

            Once he finished bathing himself, Byakuya looked back to Sayaka.  The miko’s body was still drenched in Naraku’s semen and Byakuya reasoned that since she was probably going to be violently angry with him one way or another, he might as well bathe her, too.  Even if it couldn’t possibly make up for what had happened at her shrine, removing Naraku’s vile essence from her would be at least a small courtesy, one less grievance for her to awake to.

            Byakuya took a clean washcloth from his bucket and lathered it up with soap as he had done with the last one.  He then moved to Sayaka’s side in the water and began to apply the cloth to her skin with one hand, using the other to hold her still and keep himself from pushing her out of place.  He started at her face and worked his way downward over her beck and chest.  As he bathed her, he felt his cheeks flushing and heart speeding up as his arousal mounted by her warmth, softness, and incredible beauty.  He did his best to avoid staring too long at her ample breasts, fondling her, or even stealing a kiss, but the breeding heat had him firmly in its grip and his cock began to twitch and swell in renewed interest, filling out to its full length and girth with very little provocation.  He found it necessary to turn his hips away from her to keep himself from prodding her with his hard organ.

            Byakuya’s hand trembled as it ventured lower over Sayaka’s breasts.  He cleaned each one as quickly as he could so as to limit his contact with that especially alluring area of her body, but even those brief moments strained his discipline.  As he moved his hand from her right breast to her left, he could feel her heart beating slow and steady under his palm, and he imagined himself doing… _things_ to her to get it racing with female pleasure.  His breathing becoming more labored, the wind demon tore his hand away from the miko’s ample breast and slipped it beneath the water to press it to her belly, cleaning it hurriedly in wide, rapid circular motions.

            Then, Byakuya felt _it_ , the mass of life force that Naraku had forced him to plant in Sayaka’s belly.  He closed his eyes and stilled his hand, focusing his senses so as to contemplate the life, the _child_ growing in the miko’s human womb.  It was more energy than mass at that point, registering to Byakuya’s demonic senses little more than a tiny, shining beacon of light, but still, it was _growing_.  This proof of her fertility spoke volumes to his demonic instincts, exciting him even further.  Suddenly, he could feel hot pre-cum pushing up and out of his cock, causing him to tear himself away from her completely.

            Byakuya backed away from Sayaka, his cock pulsing hard and thick, nudging high up against his muscular abdomen.  Already, his balls were tense in their sac and the warm throb at the base of his cock told him that orgasm was just a few fists away.  His heart racing, he took himself in hand, giving his impressive eleven inches a slow, experimental stroke that had him gasping in pleasure.  His erection was so huge and heavy with blood that he was privately amazed that he could reach such a state and remain conscious.  Of course, Naraku had not only deliberately endowed him with such great size, but the cardiovascular ability to _use it_.  Further, the wind demon knew he had emptied his balls at least three times in the past hour or so, but by his balls’ productive nature, the load he could feel building up in him promised to be as big as any he had shot so far.

            The sensation of Sayaka’s hot, wet pussy flesh gripping at him as pumped deeply into her remained fresh in Byakuya’s mind, and he began to fist himself faster, more urgently.  He recalled the sensation of the womb trembling against him the moment he bottomed out inside her.  As his pleasure mounted, the wind demon turned himself so that he faced away from Sayaka.  The miko had a beautiful body and it would be easy for him to pleasure himself to the sight of it, but he chose not to use her as a _direct_ object for his own masturbation.  He contented himself only with the memory of being inside her.

            Byakuya reached for his soiled haori with his free hand as he felt the pressure building within him.  The fine silken garment was thoroughly soiled with Naraku’s seed and his own – he reasoned that unleashing some more upon it wouldn’t make much difference.  He wadded it up and held it directly in front of his cock’s big, oozing head so that it would receive his seed, and he stroked himself suddenly faster to take himself over the edge.  His pre-cum flowed freely now, serving as an excellent lubricant for his hand, and that transparent liquid essence of his suddenly flooded over thick, creamy white as he came.  With half-lidded eyes, the wind demon watched as his seed burst out of him in one long, rope-like gout after another to land upon and soak into his haori over and over.  He thrust his hips into his hand, convulsing with bare-toothed ecstasy as each devastating pulse of ejaculation gripped his very soul.

            At that moment, Sayaka began to stir, waking silently to the sensation of hot spring water cleansing and soothing her lower body.  Her heart and breathing sped up suddenly and she opened her golden eyes to find herself sitting naked in a bath _other_ than the one at her shrine.  She spotted Byakuya standing in the bath water just a few feet from her.  Facing away from her, he was busy doing… _something_ with his hands, and the restrained groans of ecstasy coming from him told her all she needed to know.  She kept herself completely still as she watched his tight, rather attractive male rear clench and release with every wave of pleasure that wracked him.  She realized that in catching him literally with his dick in his hand, this was her best and only opportunity to take him by surprise.

            Sayaka leapt from the water with an explosive splash and she grabbed Byakuya from behind, snaking a strong female arm around his throat, pressing her free hand to his back, right over the large, spider-shaped scar that covered it.  At about 6 ½ feet in height compared to Sayaka’s 5 ½, he was significantly taller than her, and the difference in their heights forced him to bend his neck and spine backward in order to meet her shorter form behind him and stay on his feet.   He jolted against her, gasping as another pulse of orgasm hit and Sayaka tightened her grip, snarling into one of his elegantly-tapered ears: “Don’t you fucking move, or your cum won’t be the _only_ stuff blowing out of you.”

            Byakuya felt the hand that Sayaka had pressed to his back begin to grow warm against his skin as she fed her reiki into it.  Her threat was legitimate – at such close range, she could purify most of his insides in one shot.  His orgasm ebbed at last and he swallowed heavily, catching his breath to respond.  “All right, I won’t,” he submitted, keeping one hand wrapped around his cock as his seed continued to ooze out him, keeping his other hand on his soiled haori.

             “Where are we?” Sayaka demanded.

            “My master’s castle, far away from your village,” Byakuya answered honestly.

            “You’re going to lead me out of here, Mr. Byakuya of the Dreams,” Sayaka intoned.  “Nice and slow.”

            “If you’re thinking about escaping, we’re on an island far out to sea,” Byakuya explained, breathing quick and shallow.  “There’s a barrier surrounding it, too.  Even if you could get outside it, you’d still have dozens of miles of open water to cross before you reached land.”

            “I don’t care where we are or what’s in my way.  Show me out of here or I’ll kill you!”

            “Kill me, then,” Byakuya dared, whispering in defeat, anticipating the horrible burn of his heart and lungs vaporizing by Sayaka’s purifying energy.  Naraku had already intervened to save his life once that night; he’d didn’t expect him to do it a second time.  Perhaps worse, Sayaka had caught him masturbating and the humiliation made him almost _want_ to die.  “I guess I deserve it.”

            “You’re fucking right you deserve it!” Sayaka snarled, remembering the sensation of the wind demon’s cock surging in and out of her along with his master’s as they fucked her, _raped_ her.  The hand she kept pressed to Byakuya’s back began to glow ominously.  “My girls are _dead!_   You’re a _rapist_ and a _murderer_ , or at least an accessory to one.”

            “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” Byakuya closed his eyes, trembling as he waited for Sayaka to end him.  Some seconds passed, an eternity to wait for imminent death, and nothing happened.

            Behind Byakuya, Sayaka came within a few heartbeats of blasting a hideous hole in the wind demon when she began to think of how she almost killed him with her purifying arrows, of how much she relished in causing pain to him, a youkai and her natural enemy.  Missing his sword as well as an arm and a leg, he had been completely defenseless and the miko asked herself: if she had killed him then, would that not have made _her_ a murderer?  He hadn’t actually attacked her at that point, so it would hardly have been self-defense. 

            Sayaka had seen the extent of Naraku’s control over Byakuya.  Had Naraku not been forcing him, she knew that the male wind demon probably wouldn’t have forced himself on her or her junior priestesses.  And what did that really matter to her?  Her nightly ‘worship’ service at her shrine was basically gang rape in exchange for money, anyway.  She moonlighted as a prostitute and she felt like she alone had swallowed at least a few _gallons_ of cum over the past few months.

            More importantly, Sayaka knew that even though she had just called Byakuya a murderer, it was _Naraku,_ not Byakuya that killed her young women.  From her interactions with him up until that point, he didn’t seem to be a sadistic fuck like his master.  Compared to Naraku, Byakuya actually seemed to have some kind of moral compass in him, so Sayaka began to think that if she really was trapped in Naraku’s castle as he suggested, then he might be her only potential friend.  Perhaps, if she befriended him, she could even _persuade_ him to help her escape, rather than threaten him into it.

            Sayaka decided that the wisest thing she could do was let Byakuya live.  Her anger ebbing away, she loosened her arm from Byakuya’s neck and tore herself away from him with a curse, stepping back in the bath water.  Stunned, Byakuya lowered himself to a knee in the water so as to regain his bearings.  After a few moments of tense silence, he looked over a shoulder to glance behind him and up at Sayaka, disbelieving that she had spared his life.  “You’re… _not_ going to kill me?”

            “No,” Sayaka replied.  “Do you deserve to die?  I don’t know.  Maybe we _all_ deserve to die.”

            “Thank you,” Byakuya hushed.  “And...I _am_ sorry, about last night, about your women.”

            Sayaka sneered by the fresh, ugly memory of Naraku murdering her girls.  The memory of him and Byakuya trapping her between their powerful, demonic male bodies and fucking her, pumping her full of cum followed soon after.  Now that she thought about it directly, the brutality of the act and the size of the demon males’ cocks had her pussy and ass still throbbing with some soreness.  Aware that she was still completely naked from that vigorous ‘encounter,’ she pressed a hand to her flat belly, feeling a large amount of Byakuya’s seed still pulsing with demonic reproductive energy in her womb.  She could feel that it had taken root and she doubted that she could ever forget the orgasm it ignited in her when it found its mark.

            “You got me pregnant,” Sayaka said bluntly to Byakuya, pointing to her bare stomach for effect.  “ _Pregnant_.  I can feel your child growing in me right now.”

            Byakuya nodded with guilt.  “Yes, I know.  I can feel it, too.”

            “Is this want Naraku wants from me?  To bear you a child?” Sayaka asked.

            Byakuya looked away from Sayaka so that she couldn’t accuse him of staring at her beautiful unclothed body, even if she had caught him masturbating right in front of her.  At the same time, he remained crouched in the bath water to conceal his own nudity from her.  He shook his head.  “No.  You saw him when he first appeared at your shrine, didn’t you?  You saw what he looked like.  He’s ill and he needs you for your reiki.  It purifies his body temporarily.  What he took from you has healed him for the time being, but he’ll need more, soon.  That’s why he had me bring you here.  For you to become pregnant by me is…a bonus, I suppose.”

            “If that’s all the reason there was to it, I guess I’ll just purify this thing out of me, now,” Sayaka decided.

            The Shinto priestess gathered her reiki into a hand, preparing to press it to her belly and cleanse it of Byakuya’s demon seed and the possibly viable life growing within it.  Still kneeling in the water, Byakuya turned suddenly and raised his hands to her, a gesture for her to stop.  “ _Wait!_ ” he warned.  “You mustn’t do that!  Your pregnancy makes you more valuable to Naraku than you would be otherwise.” 

            Sayaka’s golden eyes narrowed in suspicion.  “ _Valuable?_ ”  The word carried a particularly unsettling weight.  “What could your master possibly want with a baby?  _Our_ baby?”

            Byakuya tensed and swallowed thickly.  Nothing that bode well for him, Sayaka, or their child came to his mind. “I don’t know for certain,” he replied, honestly enough.  “Naraku might see this as an opportunity to gain a grandchild.  I am, effectively, his son.  Whatever the case, his demand for reiki will soon be more than you alone can cope with.  If you continue to carry my child, he will have more reason to let you live after that.”

            Sayaka cocked her head, growing thoughtful.  “Good point,” she relented, letting the charge of reiki in her hand dissipate.  “Alright, _Bya-ku-ya_.  I’ll continue to carry your baby, for the time being, anyway.  Now, where are my clothes?”

            Byakuya returned his attention to the pile of soiled garments laying on the edge of the bath behind him.  He picked out Sayaka’s red hakama and white haori and continuing to crouch in the water, he turned to hold them up to her.  The miko saw that they were still soaked with Naraku’s demonic semen and she cursed in disgust.  “ _Fuck!_   They’re basically ruined,” she vented.

            Thoroughly displeased, Sayaka shoved her clothes back to Byakuya.  She then noticed how her own body was no longer soaked in cum as her clothes still were.  “Did you…did you _bathe_ me?” she asked.

            “Y-yes,” Byakuya admitted.  He somewhat expected Sayaka to strike him, even kill him for taking such a liberty with her body.  “I didn’t want you to wake up in the state Naraku left you in.”

            Sayaka refrained from attacking, only smirking a little.  “Well, I guess I can see why you needed to jack off so soon,” she said, planting a hand on a cocked hip.  “Men tell me that I _am_ very lovely.  It must have been so hard for you to restrain yourself, putting your hands all over me while I was out cold, unable to fight back.”

            “More than you know,” Byakuya replied, more honestly than he cared to admit.  Even then, not long after a thoroughly relieving orgasm, his body still burned with the need of his breeding heat.  Right then, he felt highly attracted to Sayaka and the lovely priestess seemed to be able to _feel_ his attraction, too.

            Sayaka saw how Byakuya avoided looking at her directly, how his cheeks had flushed with color.  At the same time, the adrenaline rush she got from waking in Naraku’s castle and immediately ambushing Byakuya had begun to fade, allowing a wave of female arousal that it had been muting to take hold of her.  The demonic energy that Byakuya’s body put out spoke to her at some primal, fiercely sexual level and by his orgasm just a few minutes earlier, she could smell fresh wind demon cum in the air.  The pheromones in its scent filled her lungs to enter her blood and saturate her whole body.  Her heart sped up and her lips fell slightly agape at the heat she could feel coming over her.

            “What…what are you doing to me?” Sayaka accused to Byakuya, her golden eyes narrowing as her chest began to rise and fall more rapidly by her quickening breathing.  An instant of dizziness swept through her head and she could feel the interior of her pussy beginning to flood over with creamy female lubricant.

            “Doing?  I’m not doing anything!” Byakuya denied forcefully.  He figured that whatever was happening to Sayaka, at such close range, she could still kill him if she wanted.

            Rivulets of perspiration flowed down Sayaka’s bare skin, both by the steamy atmosphere of the bath and her own rising body heat.  Her breasts felt heavy and sensitive and she cupped one in a hand, teasing its rosy nipple with a fingertip.  The burst of pleasure it yielded caused her to suck in a breath of surprise.  “The hell you _aren’t!_ ” she snapped at Byakuya.  “I’m suddenly feeling really, _really_ hot.”

            “But that’s…oh, _no_ ,” Byakuya began to protest, then realized the situation.  In the bath house at Sayaka’s shrine, Naraku had filled the air with some kind of aphrodisiac to get Sayaka and her women so helplessly aroused that they couldn’t fight him or Byakuya off.  Now that he and Sayaka were alone, Byakuya realized that his body was putting out an aphrodisiac of its own to attract her to him.  His _cum!_   The scent of his cum had to be the source!  He decided that he had to get both his soiled haori and himself away from Sayaka as soon as possible before anything more happened between them.

            “It’s my seed!  It has to be,” Byakuya concluded.  “Being so close to me right now must be part of it, as well.  I need to get myself away from you.”  He gathered his cum-soaked haori and other clothes into his hands, stood up, and stepped out of the bath to leave, but Sayaka rushed forward to grab him by one of his muscular upper arms and keep him near.

            “You _moron_ ,” Sayaka chastised with a searing heat in her voice.  She felt as if she could get herself off just by rubbing her thighs together, and ridiculously, the powerful, dangerously-sexy demon male before her was about to just…leave her alone.  Her blood felt like liquid fire beating through her veins and she could feel her pussy throbbing insistently between her thighs, aching to be filled.  Transparent female fluid drooled out of her sex and dripped away into the water between her knees as Byakuya’s scent and raw sexual energy worked her up.  Beyond that, she could feel all the seed he had left behind inside her when he and Naraku double-teamed her in her bath house.  Untold billions of healthy wind demon sperm nuzzled at the walls of her womb from within, arousing her with their reproductive energy.  “I still have your cum in me from before.  I can feel it.  It’s driving me _wild._ Leaving me alone won’t help any.”

            Byakuya looked down into Sayaka’s gorgeous golden eyes, seeing the intense sexual need there.  He could _smell_ how hot she was for him and his demonic instincts screamed for him to take her as hard and often as she needed.  He was seriously tempted to appease them, but he wanted to make absolutely certain of what Sayaka wanted.  “What would you have me do?” he asked, speaking softly by his close proximity to her.

            Sayaka licked her lips in mounting anticipation of fucking Byakuya right there in the bath.  She supposed that it was as good a place for it as any, and to her, the wind demon was exceptionally good looking.  He was handsome in a refined, effeminate sort of way, and Naraku had clearly engineered his pale, muscular body to keep and hold a woman’s intimate attentions for a good, long time.  She remembered how deep inside her body he could reach with that monstrous cock of his, so even without his scent and sexual energy attracting her to him, she knew it would easy for her to set herself after him.  “The first thing you can do…is fuck me.  _Right now_ ,” she said to him.

**(Soundtrack: Motörhead – In the Black)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIhwP0LVwgU** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIhwP0LVwgU)

            Gently, Sayaka tugged Byakuya back down into the water so that they stood facing each other.  She took his clothes from his hands and tossed them aside, the only thing separating their bodies now being the bath’s warm, humid air.  The nude priestess stepped up to the equally nude wind demon to grasp his wrists in her hands and place his hands firmly on her waist.  She could feel him trembling by her nearness to him and she smiled knowingly, relishing in the effect she had on him as she threw her arms around the sinewed column of his neck, hiked a thigh up his side, and thrust her hips to his.

            Byakuya gave up a restrained snarl as Sayaka began pumping her hips against his in languid, coital strokes.  His cock had softened somewhat after his earlier orgasm but now that the feverishly-aroused priestess ground her belly against it, it began to swell back up between them.  Sayaka felt this for herself and she sneered up at him in twisted, sex-crazed approval.  “That’s it, you handsome demonic _fuck_.  Get ready for me,” she whispered hotly before seizing his lips with hers.

            Byakuya moaned into Sayaka’s kiss and his large male hands left her waist to venture lower, down to the delectable swells of her rear.  Out of instinct, he gripped her sweet ass and pulled her to him firmly as he began to thrust back against her, grinding his cock against her flat belly until he could feel it pulsing at maximum size and hardness.  By Sayaka’s warmth, scent, and the delicious sound of her heart racing in her chest, the pleasure was undeniable for Byakuya and he wanted more.  Still, he found the presence of mind to push her away from him.  “ _Wait,_ ” he panted as his lips separated from the miko’s.  “Don’t you hate me?  _Shouldn’t_ you hate me?  The things Naraku and I did…”

            “Are you _actually_ trying to talk your way out of sex?” Sayaka asked, almost angrily by her mounting sexual frustration.  Then, the aroused expression in her golden eyes softened a bit.  “I know that it was Naraku forcing you to fuck me, before.  I can forgive you for that.  Actually, I think I need _your_ forgiveness, for trying to kill you and everything.”

            “I forgive you,” Byakuya said solemnly.  “I didn’t hold it against you to begin with.  But still, we shouldn’t…we shouldn’t do this.”

            “ _Ugh!”_   Sayaka gave up an unintelligible curse.  She grasped Byakuya’s chin firmly with one hand and with the other, she removed one of his hands from her perfect miko ass and brought it around to her front to cup it to her sopping, throbbing cunt.  She began rocking her hips to practically fuck his fingers.  “Do you feel how wet I am?  I’m ready for it and so are you.  Besides, you’ve already put your baby in me.  Just think of this as… _helping me out_.”

            Sayaka closed back in to nip and kiss and Byakuya’s neck, then worked her way down his chest and abdomen to lower herself to her knees in the water before him.  She would show him exactly how serious she was about fucking him.  She took his cock and balls into her hands and hefted them experimentally, marveling at their size and weight.  Aside from Naraku, he was easily the best endowed male she had ever seen and soon, he would be the best endowed one she had ever pleased with her mouth.  “You’re so big,” she awed.  “No wonder how you knocked me up.  With these balls of yours, you had all the cream you needed and with this cock, you could put it exactly where it needed to be, right in my fucking _womb!_ ”

            Byakuya’s heart raced in his chest and every life-giving beat pulsed through his cock for Sayaka to feel.  The Shinto priestess began to jack him slowly and lovingly, as she might do for one of her shrine’s customers, getting his pre-cum flowing again.  “Now, don’t you _dare_ tell me stop doing _this_ ,” Sayaka warned to Byakuya, looking up at him as she pumped him with a hand.  “I usually charge for this, but tonight, you’re getting it for _free!_ ”

            A silky white droplet of Byakuya’s most recent orgasm slipped out of his cock’s broad male crown as Sayaka worked him and the lusty miko licked it away, considering its taste.  The youki in it interacted with her reiki on her tongue, a harmless, positively electric sensation for her to enjoy.  To her, Byakuya’s seed tasted of health and power, unlike the bland, lifeless fluid Naraku had pumped down her throat earlier that night.  God help her, she salivated for _more_.

            Sayaka opened her lips wide and began to take Byakuya into her mouth, swallowing him up inch by hard, meaty inch.  Her throat bulged obscenely by his cock’s sheer size and rigidity.  The male wind demon ‘resigned’ himself to being sucked and jacked off by the beautiful miko and he wove a hand into her short, wet, silky black hair to cup her head gently and guide her.  She looked up into his eyes as she drank in his full length, holding his gaze with her own as her chin pressed against his heavy balls, her nose brushing against his cock’s smooth, hairless base.  Her expression was one of complete control; she had _him_ under control, vulnerable to her touch.  Now, she would take him to orgasm and feast on his potent demon seed, the very essence of his virility.

            Byakuya groaned aloud as Sayaka drew back and took his full, eleven-inch length past her lips all over again.  She sucked him in over and over and soon, the bath chamber filled with the rich, rhythmic _gush_ and _slurp_ of a sexy Shinto priestess fucking a well-hung wind demon’s cock with her mouth.  As a prostitute in her own shrine, she serviced men to make a living, and now she used the full measure of her oral talents on the latest, greatest servant of Naraku.

            Sayaka spent the next few minutes building Byakuya’s pleasure, expertly taking him to the crest of orgasm and backing him off, again and again.  She could feel how close to his peak he was by the size and hardness of his cock as it slid past her lips, over her tongue.  She wanted him to really _blow_ when she made him come.  Finally, his cock grew so hard and huge that using her tongue, she could ‘taste’ the veins along his meaty length pulsing with every beat of his heart, and she knew that it was time.

            Byakuya’s balls had grown tense and motionless in their smooth, hairless sac and the wind demon could feel the creamy liquid heat in them beginning to move.  His chest heaved and heart pounded as he gazed down at Sayaka; she pulled her mouth off of him with a soft _pop_ to take a complete breath and stroked him lovingly to gaze right back up at him.  “I’m going to make you come now,” she warned to him, licking away the globs of pre-cum that escaped him in rapid succession.

            Sayaka took Byakuya’s cock back into her mouth and began pumping his full length in and out, starting slow and gradually speeding up.  This time, she wouldn’t stop.  Byakuya groaned and _growled_ as his peak threatened him and he gripped her hair more tightly, thrusting his hips against her face to bring himself over the edge more quickly.  Sayaka slipped a hand around Byakuya to press it flat over his tight male rear and encourage him.  Just a few more hard pumps and he was done, and Sayaka drank him in all the way in to hold him there as he came.

            Byakuya tossed his head back and _snarled_ in demonic ecstasy as his hot, creamy cum left his balls to flow through his cock and burst out into Sayaka’s mouth.  The first few, most powerful loads shot right down her throat to enter her stomach and join that which Naraku had pumped into it not long before.  The Shinto priestess gulped frantically to keep up with the flow and she drew Byakuya out of her mouth so that the head of his cock spat directly onto her tongue, allowing her to better taste his seed.  Its flavor flooded her mouth after just a few spurts, his youki and her reiki reacting and intertwining with each other to osmose into her blood and ignite an unexpected orgasm within her.

            Sayaka moaned into Byakuya’s spewing cock at the pleasure wracking her.  She thrust a hand down between her thighs under the water to dip a few fingers inside her pussy and pump it to keep her climax going.  At the same time, she used her other hand to stroke Byakuya rapidly, keeping his climax going, as well.  Once he filled her mouth completely, she swallowed greedily and the several ounces of his cum she took in seemed to purge Naraku’s in her stomach, overwhelming the oni lord’s vile fluid and destroying it at the cellular level.  Only healthy, potent wind demon seed remained to be digested and Sayaka felt a strange relief flood over her by it.

            Byakuya’s ejaculations ebbed at last and his cock began to soften in Sayaka’s mouth.  The priestess pulled her mouth off him with a gasp and a glistening thread of his seed and her saliva linked them briefly afterward.  She looked up at him with her golden eyes glowing with female satisfaction, satisfaction stemming from her ability to bring a male such pleasure and the receipt of her own in the process.  “How was _that?_ ” she asked with a sultry smile, closing back in to lick him clean.

            Byakuya reached down with a hand and took hold of one of Sayaka’s upper arms, hauling her to her feet suddenly and bringing her in for a hard, possessive kiss.  By his great strength, she _oomph-ed_ into his mouth, then closed her eyes and opened her mouth to him.  Their tongues danced and thrust back and forth between their mouths, pushing around a few thick wads of his seed and her saliva for both of them to taste.  Breaking the kiss reluctantly, Byakuya whispered to her with surprising ferocity: “You will do that only for _me._   As long as you are here, you are _mine_ , not _his_.”

            Sayaka nodded her consent.  “Works for me.”  If she could get off just by sucking Byakuya’s big, delicious cock and eating his seed, she was all for it.  Byakuya extended a hand to his magic origami crane and it enlarged in size at his silent command, rising into the air and floating over to where he and Sayaka stood in the water.  It turned so that its ‘head’ faced away from them, then pitched toward them at a roughly 45-degree angle.  It became as a winged seat that floated in the air and Byakuya pushed Sayaka back into it, spreading her thighs wide and kneeling between them in the bath water.

            “My turn,” Byakuya said.  Sayaka smiled devilishly at him and shifted to get comfortable upon the magic crane holding her.  She rocked her hips upward and spread her thighs further apart to give Byakuya the best access to her beautiful female mound.  He peeled the silky petals of her pussy open to gaze directly upon her innermost flesh.  Her vagina’s exposed outer gate quivered and shed a glistening droplet of her milky female cream for him to see.  The transparent fluid suddenly turned white and Byakuya realized that the large amount of semen he’d shot into her a little while ago was bleeding back out of her, draining out of her womb to flow down and out of her pussy.  His mouth watered for a taste and he could not restrain himself any longer.  He closed in to lick the creamy fluid away and began lapping and sucking at all the vibrant pink tissues he could reach, drinking his own seed out of her.

            “ _Mmm_ …that’s _good_ ,” Sayaka praised, her voice quavering as Byakuya ate her up with as much enthusiasm as she had used on him.  She slipped a hand down between her thighs to weave it through the wind demon’s long, wet, silky black hair, stroking his head in appreciation and cupping it so that she could thrust her pussy up into his mouth.  She used her other hand to knead a full breast, playing her fingertips over its rosy nipple to accentuate her pleasure.

            Once he had cleaned her of his seed, Byakuya moved upward to suckle on Sayaka’s elegantly-hooded clit, slipping a few long, agile fingers into her weeping cunt.  Her inner muscles rippled and milked around his fingers, making him impatient for the moment when he parted them with his cock again.  He began to thrust his fingers in and out of her, curling them upward to find the raised, fleshy ‘sweet spot’ along her vagina’s anterior wall and rub it to get her wild and writhing beneath him.  Being Naraku’s incarnation allowed him to inherit some particularly _useful_ knowledge from his creator.

            “Oh, _fuck!_ ” Sayaka cursed, jolts of white-hot ecstasy coursing through her entire body.  Her nipples and her clit pulsed together as Byakuya worked her up.  “Right there!  _Right there!_ ”

            Byakuya smiled into Sayaka’s pussy and suckled more intently at her swollen pearl, pumping the pads of his fingers at her sweet spot harder and more rapidly.  She was thoroughly well-lubricated on the inside but he made sure to limit his force and speed to avoid hurting her.  He heard her heart speed up suddenly and she cried out as orgasm took her, the tiny, uniquely female orifice between her clit and vaginal opening spitting searing hot jets of her body’s tangy cream directly into his mouth.

            Sayaka’s back arched as she came hard, blood vessels in her neck straining visibly as she soared out of control, blowing apart in the figurative sense by the impulse of Byakuya’s lips and fingers.  The wind demon drank up every drop her body produced and lapped at her until she was clean.  He then stood up before her, his lips and chin dripping with her juices and his cock throbbing at full erection.  When she came back to herself, Sayaka opened her eyes to see Byakuya fisting himself slowly, brandishing himself to her and keeping himself ready for her. 

            Pearly globs of thick, white semen slipped out of Byakuya’s broad male crown with each gripping stroke of his fist and Sayaka felt her pussy fill with a fresh flood of lubrication at the sight.  Her womb trembled in her belly and her heart raced in her chest - it was time.  She reached down between her thighs to form an inverted ‘V’ with her fingers and spread her the silky pink petals of her pussy wide open, offering her body to the powerful, highly-virile male wind demon before her.  “Give it to me,” she commanded.

            Byakuya stepped forward and guided his cock down to Sayaka’s open sex, rubbing its bloated head up and down her exposed inner flesh between her fingers, relishing in the lubricated, utterly frictionless sensation.  He leaned over her, bracing his weight by pressing his free hand to a section of his magic crane next to Sayaka’s head, and his big cockhead began to breach her pussy’s outer gate, slipping up into her with a silent, yet tangible _pop_.  From there, he slipped his hands under the crooks of her knees and commanded his magic crane to tilt forward, transferring her weight into his hold.  Sayaka threw her arms around his neck to hold onto him and then, he lowered his hands, letting gravity do the work and seat her body onto his in one, smooth stroke.

            Sayaka mewled and Byakuya groaned in passion as their bodies became one.  Her inner muscles spread wide to accept him.  The beautiful priestess prostitute felt a sensation of distinct emptiness flowing out of her, replaced with his heat and steely hardness.  His big, heavy balls came to rest against her rear, fitting perfectly between their taut globes.  She could feel his heart beating inside her, right up against her womb, and she tightened her arms around his neck, her breasts flattening against his chest as she held him close.

            Effortlessly Byakuya lifted Sayaka off his cock by a single, experimental inch and let her sink back down, his big cockhead nudging deeply at her cervix by his great length.  He closed his eyes and shivered in pleasure, her insides gripping and milking at him as his hand never could, and Sayaka smiled at the expression on his face.  “How do I feel?” she asked.

            “Incredible,” Byakuya answered breathlessly.  “Like…like you were _poured_ around me.  So _good._ Do I feel good for you?”

            “Fuck, yes.”  Briefly, Sayaka removed one of her hands from behind Byakuya’s neck and pressed it to her belly, right over where she could feel him pulsing inside her.  “You’re so big, so deep in me.  Give me more.”

            Byakuya lifted Sayaka up by two inches this time.  As gravity impaled her on him once again, Sayaka’s soft, sultry moan encouraged him greatly and he added another inch to his retreat and advance, then another, and another, until he was giving the lovely miko his full length on every pumping stroke.  With his great demonic strength, he moved her up and down his cock with ease, taking her at an unhurried pace.  He made slow, easy love to her so that they could both relish in the sensations flowing through them.  The encounter at her shrine had been a hard, frenzied fuck, more about him unloading his balls into her, siring a child with her as quickly as possible than anything else.  Now, even though they were in Naraku’s castle and in at least some danger, he felt that he and she had the time they needed to enjoy themselves properly.

            Sayaka gyrated her hips to meet Byakuya’s beat for coital beat.  She pulled him in for a deep, pleasurable kiss, then pushed him away so that she could look down between their bodies and watch him surge in and out of her.  His cock glistened with a heavy coat of her juicy female cream and it plunged in and out of her body with a satisfying _gush_. 

            “Faster,” Sayaka said to Byakuya, almost begging, and the wind demon sped up as she wanted.  He pumped into her harder, mating the head of his cock to the mouth of her womb again and again, and her full breasts bounced softly, her nipples grazing his chest in time with his thrusts.  The water sloshed gently around them as they moved.  Soon, they could both feel orgasm building up within them.

            Byakuya’s cock began to grow longer and thicker inside Sayaka, pulsing potently for her to feel.  In the brief, intimate moments when his cock’s head kissed her womb, she could feel his creamy male essence oozing out of him and slipping through her cervix to enter the deepest part of her, anointing the heart of her womanhood with his heat and demonic energy.  Her womb quivered at the taste of even those small amounts of his cum and jolts of incredible pleasure shot through her as a result, each one a prelude to the glorious, consuming peak she knew was coming.

            Byakuya began to move harder, faster, losing himself to his own need.  He pumped Sayaka onto his cock to use her entire body as a living sex toy.  The beautiful miko saw the strain on his handsome face and she knew he couldn’t hold out much longer.  She began to take control of their joining, humping her hips against his insistently to get him to backpedal through the water.  Soon, Byakuya felt his calves press against the edge of the bath and Sayaka gave him a sudden push backward, causing him to fall onto his rear on the wooden floor behind him.

            Sayaka pressed Byakuya down onto his back and planted her feet on the floor to either side of the male wind demon’s hips.  Immediately, she began to ride him as she wanted, hard and fast with the ability to control the angle of his entry.  She kept her thighs spread wide so that he could see exactly how her pussy’s silky pink petals drank him in on her way down and clung to him on her way up.  “Almost there.  Just…just hold on!” Sayaka grit out, thrusting a hand down between her thighs to pluck and strum at her swollen clit.

            Byakuya could feel Sayaka’s womb throbbing against him as she ground it down against the head of his cock.  He gripped her waist and thrust up beneath her, driving himself as deep as her body would allow over and over to bring her over the edge.  The interior of her pussy began sucking and milking at him frantically and she cried out as orgasm took her at last.  He tossed his head back as the fiercely intimate stimulation set him off, as well.

            Sayaka felt Byakuya bury himself to the hilt within her and hold still.  His heavy balls tightened against her ass from below and his cock jerked inside her, bulging out as his seed began pumping through it.  Sayaka’s eyes widened and her mouth fell agape; she could _feel_ the pressure of his seed pushing up his cock, a pillar of liquid heat flowing out of him and into her.  His thick white cream burst through her cervix and exploded directly into her womb, defying gravity to drench its hungering walls and fill it from the bottom up.

            Another orgasm, hot on the heels of the last, destroyed Sayaka’s mind in an instant.  The youki in Byakuya’s cum seeped through the walls of her womb to enter her blood and saturate her whole body, igniting one dizzying peak after another within her for almost a full minute.  When his ejaculations ebbed, she gasped for breath and slumped forward onto his chest, her breasts flattening against his pectorals and her heart racing right next to his.

            Byakuya wrapped his arms around Sayaka and held her close, closing his cobalt blue eyes to rest with her on the bath chamber’s floor.  After a few minutes, he rolled them over so that she lay on her back and he pushed himself up onto his arms to gaze down at her.  She opened her eyes and smiled up at him.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

            Byakuya returned Sayaka’s smile and lowered his head to kiss her again.  He played his tongue against hers, more languidly than before, then pulled away. “Thank _you_ ,” he said in kind.

            After luxuriating in the sensation of Sayaka’s pussy milking him, Byakuya began to pull out, eliciting a soft moan from her.  His softening cock separated from her pussy with an audible _pop_ and her well-fucked entrance quivered for a moment before shedding a heavy glob of his seed, followed by another, then another, until the stuff was running down between the taut globes of her rear to drip away into the water just beneath them. The male wind demon knelt in the water between her thighs again and claimed her sex with his mouth to suck his own seed out of her, lapping and suckling at her tender pussy flesh until she was completely clean once more.

            Now that they were both clean, generally dry, and Sayaka was thoroughly sexed-out, Byakuya stood up and scooped the beautiful priestess up into his arms, stepping out of the bath and leaving the bath chamber for a nearby bedroom.  A clean futon lay on the bedroom’s floor and Byakuya lay Sayaka down upon it.  “Sleep here, for a while.  You’ll be safe,” he said to her, covering her with a sheet.  “I’ll go and find you some clean clothes.”

            “ _Mm_ ,” Sayaka slurred.  Between servicing dozens of men in her shrine’s worship hall, taking Naraku and Byakuya at once in her bath house, and going another round with Byakuya alone in the bath of Naraku’s castle, all in just a few hours, she was thoroughly worn out.  Flooded with sexual relief at last, she fell asleep quickly and Byakuya left her alone, stepping outside her bedroom and sliding its shoji door shut behind him. 

            Entering the hallway outside Sayaka’s bedroom, the wind demon found himself confronted with a pair of Naraku’s skeleton soldiers.  Silently, they moved to stand to either side of the bedroom door, facing away from it and standing at rigid attention.  They appeared to be guarding the door, yet Byakuya spoke a warning to them nonetheless.  “Disturb her at all, and I’ll _destroy_ you.” 

            Byakuya then left in search of clean clothing for himself and Sayaka, and after that, a meeting with his evil master.

 

**-To be continued-**


	10. Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeing that Byakuya will need assistance on his next mission, Naraku works to bring the wind sorceress Kagura, perhaps his favorite incarnation, back to life.

 

**(Soundtrack: Opeth – Ghost of Perdition)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDBykpSXsSE** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDBykpSXsSE)

            While Byakuya and Sayaka got better ‘acquainted’ with each other in the bath of Naraku’s dark castle, Naraku himself moved quietly through the tunnels of the castle’s labyrinthine underbelly, descending further into the interior of the artificial island he had built the castle upon.  Its black stone walls were lit with torches that burned with eerie blue flame, flame sustained not by any known solid or liquid fuel, but by Naraku’s youki alone.  After a period of complete silence, Magatsuhi spoke into Naraku’s mind.  “ _Where are we going?”_ the evil spirit asked from his place within the Shikon no Tama, within _Naraku_.

            “We are going into… _me_.  This whole island is an extension of my body,” Naraku answered, speaking aloud so that he could enjoy the way his smooth, yet sinister voice echoed off the stone walls.  “There is an antechamber ahead.  I use it to birth my incarnations.”

            The claustrophobic tunnel that Naraku walked through soon opened up into a spherical chamber roughly fifty feet in diameter.  Torches of blue flame like the ones in the tunnel leading to the chamber sat in a series of steel mounts bolted into the chamber’s smooth wall, lining its widest circumference.  A six-foot circular hole, like an empty well, marked the chamber’s bottommost ‘pole.’  Exiting the tunnel behind him, Naraku stepped down into the spheroid chamber to approach the well and kneel before it.

            Naraku peered down into the well and ink-black darkness peered back at him.  “Byakuya will need help in order to capture Kikyo.  She is formidable.  Kohaku accompanies her and he is formidable, as well,” Naraku said to Magatsuhi, slipping one of his armor’s two steel vambraces off of his right arm and rolling up the sleeve of his haori to expose his arm completely.  He clenched and unclenched his fist, admiring the way the muscles in his forearm flexed, then plunged his arm into the darkness in the well below him.  “Out of all my incarnations, there is one whose abilities will best complement Byakuya’s.”

            “ _And just which one would that be?_ ” Magatsuhi asked.

            Naraku grinned widely as he envisaged the incarnation he made ready to resurrect.  Then, a creamy black fluid, his concentrated demonic essence, swelled up out of the well to envelop his arm up to his elbow.  He licked his lips in anticipation as he prepared to speak his incarnation’s lovely name, for he had not spoken it in years. “Her name…is _Kagura_.”

~~~~

            Still nude and semi-erect, feeling pleasurable aftershocks from his feverish encounter with Sayaka in the bath, Byakuya strode purposefully through the halls of Naraku’s dark castle.  He sought the castle’s ‘loom room,’ the room in the castle which housed a magic loom that could weave complex, high-quality articles of silken clothing, such as his hakama, haori, and vestment, or even an authentic replica of Sayaka’s miko garb.  It could do so by voice command and needed no actual silk to be fed into it; the cloth would be synthesized out from Naraku’s youki on the spot.  Had Kagome been present to see it, with her knowledge of 20th/21st-century technology, she might have called it a ‘clothes printer.’

            Byakuya found the loom room in short order, entering it to approach the loom within.  The loom itself was a precisely-built machine of oak planks, brass pulleys, and steel wires that stood almost ten feet tall and ten feet wide.  It seemed to sense Byakuya’s presence.  As he stepped closer to it, the machine’s weaving arms moved by some unseen force, indexing themselves like musicians placing their hands upon their instruments, so as to make themselves ready for his order.  “Clothes, please,” Byakuya said to the loom, ever mindful of his nakedness.  “Like the ones I wore before.”

            Immediately, the loom’s weaving arms began cycling back and forth, conjuring very real silk into sudden existence by Naraku’s demonic power.  It could work at a rate of several square feet in a single minute, faster than any human hands could.  With Byakuya’s measurements pre-programmed into it, it first produced a copy of wind demon’s charcoal-grey hakama, followed by his duck-egg-blue haori and his navy outer vestment.  The male wind demon removed his new clothes from the loom gratefully and slipped into them with visible relief, relief stemming from the simple pleasure of no longer being completely naked, wearing clean clothes once more.  Once he finished dressing, he spoke another command to the loom: “Now, make some clothes for Sayaka.  She is… a guest in this castle.  She is a miko, so let’s start with clothes like those a miko would usually wear.  You understand, don’t you?”

            Indeed, the loom understood Byakuya’s request, producing three more garments: a red hakama, a white kimono, and a red haori, worn beneath the kimono.  The loom could sense Sayaka’s presence within the castle and it analyzed her body’s measurements remotely, so that the clothes it made would fit her exactly as her last ones had.  Byakuya removed Sayaka’s miko clothes from the loom and ran his fingers over their freshly-made material.  “Oh, these are very nice.  Sayaka should like these.  Thank you,” the wind demon whispered to the loom.  He knew the loom could ‘hear’ him in an absolute sense, so he spoke to it as if it was a sentient being, actually able to appreciate his praise.  Ironically, for Byakuya a mute, inanimate object was as good or better a conversationalist than Naraku.

            As Byakuya took Sayaka’s clothes from the loom, he felt a pang of sudden dizziness overcome him.  He cried out as he lost his balance and slipped off the loom to fall to the floor.  Everything in his field of vision seemed to be spinning and he clutched a hand to his heart as his very life force wavered within him.  Obviously, Naraku was doing… _something_ , something outlandish enough to affect him by proxy through the link they shared.

            The loom began weaving again, but not by Byakuya’s command.  Regaining his balance, Byakuya sat up to see what it was making.  It produced three more female garments, ones whose color and design he had never seen before: a green yukata, worn closest to the body, a dark blue kimono, worn outside the yukata, and finally, another, significantly looser and heavier kimono, made of white silk with blood-red rectangular patterns woven in.  Memories that Byakuya had inherited from Naraku fell into place within his mind.  As he recognized the clothes’ color scheme, his heart sped up as their intended recipient’s name passed his lips with awe.  “ _Kagura!_ ”

~~~~

            Back in the chamber deep beneath the castle’s foundation, Naraku gathered his evil youki around him and fed it through his arm into the demonic essence that had risen up in the hole at the chamber’s bottom.  His index and middle fingers acted as conductors for his youki and it leapt out from them as arcs of deep violet electricity. The charges in those arcs dispersed into the black liquid around Naraku’s arm and after a few seconds, the liquid began to churn and boil with ghastly, supernatural activity.  Naraku stepped back from the roiling liquid and the stuff shot upward as a fountain of crude oil, splattering against the top of the spherical underground chamber.  Before it could come raining back down, though, it suddenly grew highly viscous, almost solid, linking the poles of the chamber as a pillar of rippling, semi-cured resin.

            An ovoid bubble began to grow in the mid-point of the resin pillar, its transparent membrane crisscrossed with tiny veins and its volume filled with a cloudy fluid: _amniotic_ _fluid_.  Floating freely in the fluid medium Naraku had created, a single cell, like that of a human woman’s egg, began to divide and grow at a frenzied rate.  Naraku had achieved the immaculate, yet distinctly _unholy_ conception of new life, and that new life that would soon grow into a second Kagura.

            “ _Kagura, you say?_ ” Magatsuhi asked of Naraku, reciting the late, soon-to-be reborn wind sorceress’ lovely name.

            “Yes.  She was my second incarnation,” Naraku answered, using his demonic senses to perceive Kagura’s zygote as it attached to the inner wall of its artificial, demonic growth chamber.  “I modeled Byakuya after her.  Their powers will be similar enough that they will be able to work together effectively.”

            “ _But obviously, she died, at some point,_ ” Magatsuhi speculated.  “ _How?_ ”

            Naraku smiled with evil pleasure.  “I killed her,” he said of Kagura, delightfully recalling the gruesome, agonizing end he put her to.  “She was rebellious by nature, defying me however she could almost right from the start.  Eventually, she outlived her usefulness but now, she can be useful again, if only for a while.”

            Together, Naraku and Magatsuhi watched as Kagura’s practically-invisible zygote grew into a plainly-visible embryo in less than a minute after cellular division began.  A minute later, it became a fetus, and another minute after that, it grew to the size of an unborn female infant.  At that point, Kagura’s new body had reached the largest size that the limited amount of nutrients her umbilical cord fed into it could allow.  Naraku recognized this and commanded many very thin, needle-like tendrils of demonic flesh to penetrate the membrane of Kagura’s birthing pod and converge upon her infantile body.

            By Naraku’s guidance, the tendrils pierced Kagura’s skin carefully and entered her body at dozens of points along her arms, legs, and spine, no two points spaced more than an inch apart.  Around half of them branched out into capillary networks that bonded intimately with Kagura’s prenatal musculature.  The other half of them reached deeper, penetrating the exterior of her soft, undeveloped bones to enter the spongy marrow within.  Kagura’s infant body twitched and fidgeted reflexively in discomfort at the alien sensation gripping it.  The ultimate growing pains rocked it, even if it did not yet have the consciousness to perceive the pain in sentient terms.

            Oxygen, nutrients, and growth accelerators flowed through Naraku’s tendrils to enter Kagura’s body.  Her body responded immediately, her bones and muscles growing beyond those of an infant, while her circulatory system and internal organs grew to match.  Her skeleton gave off a series of soft _pops_ as her bones lengthened and thickened, formations of cartilage slipping into place as her bones found their final alignment.  Naraku listened closely: beyond the sounds of her skeleton growing, the rapid, staccato _bumpabumpabump_ of Kagura’s prenatal heartbeat soon became the strong, rhythmic _ba-bump, ba-bump_ of a grown woman.  Naraku’s own pulse quickened at the thought of bending Kagura’s heart to his will once again, to remind her of his power over her.

            In as short a time as it took for her to develop from a single cell to a viable fetus, Kagura grew from an 18-inch long, seven pound infant to a 6 ½ foot, roughly 200-pound adult female wind demon.  With her rapid maturity, her silky black hair had grown long enough to reach her delectable female rear and cover most of her bare back in thick, flowing tresses, and the gently swirling currents of the amniotic fluid caused her hair to dance softly over the spider-shaped scar that dominated her back.  By Naraku’s design, she was now significantly taller and heavier than the average Japanese human woman, taller and heavier than she had been even in her previous body.  This time, Naraku endowed Kagura with utterly Amazonian physique, her new musculature exhibiting incredible tone and rippling with refined, athletic power and grace.  With her enhanced strength and her dark, exotic beauty, she could bring any opponent to his or _her_ knees, in more ways than one.  Kikyo and Kohaku were dangerous together, but when teamed with Byakuya against them, Naraku predicted that Kagura would be close to unbeatable.

            Magatsuhi voiced his approval.  “ _Oh, she’s cute,_ ” he praised, looking upon Kagura’s new, highly-attractive body through Naraku’s eyes.  “ _Beautiful, really.  Such an elegant face, and all that muscle!  But her tits, though…and her ass and her thighs.  I think they need some adjustment._ ”

            “Adjustment?” Naraku asked for clarification.

            “ _Tch_.  _You know exactly what I mean, Naraku,_ ” Magatsuhi chastised.  “ _I know how much of a hentai you are, with the show you put on at Sayaka’s shrine.  She’s a little…flat, don’t you think?  Make some adjustments!  Give Kagura the kind of body that InuYasha, Sesshomaru, and every other male in this world won’t be able to keep their eyes…or their hands…off of.”_

            “Ah, I understand,” Naraku smiled.  Now that the growth of Kagura’s new body was complete, the oni lord withdrew all of his needle-like fluid delivery tendrils from her, the tiny puncture holes they left behind bleeding only slightly into the amniotic fluid outside and healing almost instantly.  He pulled all but six tendrils out of the growth chamber and directed two of the remainder to Kagura’s breasts, sending two others to her supple female rear.  The last two slithered their way to her left and right thighs, respectively.  The tendrils at her breasts slipped carefully through her rosy nipples to invade the feminine glands beneath, while the ones at her rear plunged deep to reach the muscles of her glutes.  The ones at her thighs penetrated her skin and split up to interface with her quadriceps and hamstrings simultaneously.

            All at once, growth fluid pumped out of the tendrils to enlarge and enhance Kagura’s breasts, thighs, and ass.  Naraku increased their size incrementally, listening for Magatsuhi’s approval.  “ _Bigger,_ ” the spectral demon demanded, watching the most attention-getting parts of Kagura’s body grow before him.  “ _Bigger!  Make her tits bigger than her head!  Make her into the *ultimate* demonic slut!_ ”

            “Let us remain within _reason_ ,” Naraku qualified.  “You do realize that she’ll have to wear _clothes_ , once in a while.”

            Naraku soon halted Kagura’s growth, satisfied with her new measurements.  Now, the female wind demon was not only toned and athletic, but highly voluptuous, as well.  Further, for his own perverse amusement, he made certain that along with everything else, the internal and external dimensional changes he had made to her body affected her reproductive tract.  Her vagina was now much deeper and tighter than before, and Naraku predicted that if Kagura ever found herself in a sexual situation with a very well-endowed male, such as Sesshomaru, she would be able to handle his full length and suck his balls _dry_. 

            Naraku had also enhanced the parts of Kagura’s anatomy that worked as receptors for her sexual pleasure, giving her a larger, much more sensitive clit and internal ‘sweet spot’.  He doubled the number of nerve endings along her vaginal canal, so that virtually any male she laid with would be able to bring her to repeated, devastating orgasms with ease.  Naraku fully intended to have Kagura himself, at some point, something he never got around to doing in her previous life and something he felt some regret over.  With the changes he had made to her ‘girl parts,’ he anticipated coaxing some truly delicious sounds and _fluid_ out of her, watching her become a slave to her body’s desires regardless of how much she hated him.

            “ _Much better,_ ” Magatsuhi said as he looked Kagura over from head to toe.  “ _She has an incredible body, now.  I can’t wait to see her in action.  Shall we introduce Byakuya to his new, sexy sister?”_

            “Excellent idea,” Naraku agreed.  He transitioned from verbal communication to telepathic so as to reach Byakuya.  “ _Byakuya, come to my den, would you?  I have something *wonderful* to show you.”_

~~~~

            By this point, Byakuya had left the castle’s loom room and returned to the room where Sayaka slept, carrying her replacement clothes and those intended for Kagura.  To his relief, he had found that the skeleton soldiers guarding the room’s shoji door had not moved, and he entered the room to find Sayaka undisturbed, fast asleep on her futon.  The male wind demon folded up the articles of her miko clothing neatly and lay them next to her on the hardwood floor, so that she would find them when she awoke.

            Just as Byakuya began to contemplate what to do with Kagura’s clothes, Naraku spoke into his mind, causing him to tense and shiver in revulsion.  The wind demon felt that he was beginning to _hate_ his master.  “ _Come to my den, would you?_ ” Naraku asked with suspicious politeness.“ _I have something wonderful to show you_.”

            Given that he was holding her newly-made clothes, Byakuya reasoned that whatever Naraku had done, it directly involved Kagura, his female predecessor and the incarnation whom Naraku had patterned him after.  He realized that the fluctuation he had felt in his life-force a few minutes before must have been that which resulted from Kagura’s rebirth.  “ _On my way,”_ Byakuya replied to Naraku by telepathy.  He backed out of Sayaka’s room quietly so as not to wake the sleeping miko and he closed its shoji door behind him.  He then navigated his way through the castle to Naraku’s den, finding it empty. 

            The trap door in Naraku’s den leading to the dungeon below the castle flung open of its own accord, inviting Byakuya to come below.  Byakuya approached with some trepidation, then descended through it and climbed down the ladder connecting it to the stone floor several feet beneath.  He followed the path that Naraku had walked earlier and soon joined his master in the spheroid chamber deep beneath the castle.

            Byakuya entered the chamber and stepped carefully onto its curved floor so as not to stumble, immediately noticing Kagura as she floated in a fetal position in the transparent artificial womb surrounding her.  He then gave Naraku a glance of uncertainty.  The male wind demon halfway expected his master to murder him on the spot and he had dozens of incredibly cruel methods at his disposal.  Byakuya had attacked Naraku in Sayaka’s bath house and he knew that did not need to worry about _if_ Naraku would retaliate, but _when_.  Kagura herself was evidence of Naraku’s patient, yet vindictive nature.  The wind sorceress had defied or plotted against Naraku on an almost daily basis for _years_ , but in the end, Naraku exacted his vengeance on her.  Bringing her back to life would give him the opportunity to exact even more.

            Naraku sensed Byakuya’s thoughts and smiled darkly.  He sprouted a single, dark red tentacle from his back and he guided it to shoot outward and wrap tightly around Byakuya, clamping the wind demon’s arms to his midsection and holding them immobile.  He then pulled Byakuya to him so that he could grasp his chin with a hand and speak to him face-to-face, red eyes locked with cobalt blue.  “You are right to fear me,” Naraku said, producing another tentacle from his back and shaping its end into a sharp, serrated blade.  He pressed it to Byakuya’s throat, directly over his hammering carotid artery.  “I’ve killed people for much less than what you did to me tonight.”

            Byakuya stiffened as Naraku’s tentacle blade began to dig into his flesh, tiny rivulets of his blood beginning to slip down his neck.  Other than that, he did not struggle, knowing that there was nothing he could do, nowhere he could run that would allow him to escape Naraku, as Kagura had once tried.  “I should probably tell you I’m sorry, but I’m not,” he spoke honestly and somewhat defiantly.  “Sayaka’s girls were so pure and beautiful.”  Byakuya then recalled that Sayaka and her junior priestesses were basically prostitutes and not exactly _unwilling_ ones, at that. “Well, maybe not so pure, but definitely beautiful,” he corrected himself.  “They felt so _good_.  And now they’re dead, because of you.”

            Naraku retracted his tentacle blade from Byakuya’s throat and brushed the wind demon’s silky black bangs away from his elegant male brow.  “Ah, Byakuya.  I can’t stay angry at _you,_ ” he relented, indulging himself in his incarnation’s attractive facial features.  “You’ll forget about those women in time.  After all, I saved their mistress just for you.  Sayaka may be an unwilling guest here at the moment, but if we work together, we may be able to groom her into something _more_.”

            “Such as?” Byakuya asked.

            “A wife.  _Your_ wife,” Naraku answered.  “The mother of your children and a willing partner in your bed.  I know you’ve already fucked her again.  In the bath, she didn’t seem to need much persuasion to accept you into her body.  Just a little exposure to the scent of your seed and she was all yours.  Think of all that you can do with her with a week, or a _month_.  Defy me no further and I’ll let her live.”

            “She will be _mine_ ,” Byakuya demanded.  “Don’t just let her live, keep your hands and your _tentacles_ off of her.”

            Naraku released Byakuya from his tentacle’s grip with a laugh.  “Of course!  The attraction between the two of you is mutual, if adversarial.  Serve me willingly and I won’t interfere with it.  Besides, Sayaka isn’t the miko I _really_ want, anyway.  That would be _Kikyo_.”

            “Kikyo, huh?” Byakuya pondered.  “Why have you revived Kagura, then?”

            Naraku turned from Byakuya and used his demonic powers to conjure a mass of light into existence at the bottom of Kagura’s birthing pod, illuminating the unconscious wind sorceress’ bare body in dramatic fashion.  Via telekinesis, he detached the pod from the pillars of ink-black resin supporting it, plucking it free as if he was picking a piece of strange, very large fruit.  He lowered it to the floor of the stone chamber, placing it between himself and Byakuya so that the male wind demon could examine his new sister more closely.  “Your next mission will be to capture Kikyo and bring her to me,” Naraku explained.  “She is even more powerful that Sayaka, so Kagura will assist you.  What do you think of her?”

            “She’s…beautiful,” Byakuya hushed, stunned by Kagura’s incredible physique.  Of course, she was completely naked inside her pod and the innocence of her fetal position, as well as the tranquil expression on her face, contrasted with the enormous sex appeal Naraku had endowed her with.  The male wind demon reached out and placed a hand upon the surface of Kagura’s pod.  Its outer membrane was warm to the touch and he could feel Kagura’s heart beating through it.  “She’s so _powerful_ , too…”

            “Let’s wake her up,” Naraku decided.  The oni lord guided the bladed tentacle he had used to threaten Byakuya to pierce the exterior of Kagura’s birthing pod and slice it open.  Gallons of amniotic fluid rushed out as a result, and the curved shape of the spherical chamber caused the stuff to run down into the well-like hole at the bottom.  Kagura’s body sank to the bottom of the pod as the fluid buoying it receded, and her hair no longer floated freely in a fluid medium, instead clinging to her body in glistening mass of wet, glossy black.  As the last of its fluid contents poured out, the outer membrane of the pod remained semi-rigid and retained its shape so that it did not collapse into a gooey heap onto Kagura’s body.

            Naraku knelt into Kagura’s open, drained pod and aligned his upper body with hers, tilting her head back so that he could take her lips with his own.  His intent was not to steal a kiss, as he intended to steal a complete _fuck_ from her at a later date, but to initiate her respiration.  Sealing his lips very tightly to hers, he breathed into her mouth, inflating her lungs and stimulating her diaphragm.  The oni lord repeated the action a few times and Kagura’s involuntary muscle actions took over from there.  As he pulled away, the female wind demon’s chest began to rise and fall as she began breathing on her own.  Naraku then severed her umbilical cord very close to her navel and projected a hot jet of his youki from a single finger to cauterize it at the root.

            Byakuya lay Kagura’s clothes out on the floor of the stone chamber, creating a makeshift bed for the wind sorceress.  Naraku slipped his right arm underneath Kagura’s legs at her knees, using his left to support her shoulders as he extracted her from her pod, bringing her into open air for the first time in her second life.  He willed the pod’s remains to disintegrate and used a full-body charge of his youki to purge Kagura’s body of the amniotic fluid clinging to it.  He then knelt and carefully lay her out upon her clothes.  Byakuya joined Naraku beside Kagura, kneeling at her left side opposite his master.

            Naraku willed the breastplate of his demonic armor to part down the middle and spread open in two halves.  Byakuya watched with morbid interest as his master unfastened the dark violet haori he wore underneath his armor to bare his muscular chest and abdomen, then placed his right hand flat over his sternum.  Naraku’s hand glowed with demonic energy and seemed to ‘phase’ out of existence, becoming semi-transparent.  It could now pass through solid matter unimpeded and Naraku sank it through the skin, muscle, and bone to grip his own heart.

            “I have recreated Kagura’s flesh,” Naraku said, grunting in some discomfort as he rooted around inside his own chest.  He closed his red eyes and breathed deeply as he touched his fingertips to the walls of his heart, feeling his life beating through it.  “I must now recall her _spirit_.”

            Byakuya watched Naraku’s chest begin to glow around where the oni lord had submerged his hand into it.  Naraku’s heart was the source of that glow, his spirit concentrating itself into it for him to manipulate.  A sizable portion of his spirit separated from the rest and osmosed into his hand.  He retracted his hand and an orb of blood red light radiated within it, basking his face and chest in a ghastly glow.  Naraku held Kagura’s very soul in his hand.

            “Here’s another reason for you to obey me,” Naraku said to Byakuya, holding Kagura’s manifested spirit out for the male wind demon to see.  “Even if you make it necessary for me to kill you, you won’t be free.  Your spirit will simply return to that from whence it came: _mine_. You’ll just end up like Kagura: a spirit without a body, trapped within me for years on end in a state of neither life nor death.  I highly recommend that you place a greater value on the life you have now.”

            Byakuya swallowed thickly.  By Naraku’s macabre demonstration, Byakuya discovered that he had no real life of his own, only that which Naraku endowed him with.  Sayaka, though, was a real woman with real life.  He realized that even if he wasn’t totally committed to living for himself, he could live for _her_ , to try and protect her from whatever craziness Naraku had planned next.  “Don’t worry.  I _will_ ,” he said.

            Naraku slipped his left arm underneath Kagura’s shoulders and pulled her into a sitting position in his lap, her head hanging limply to bare her throat, her hair connecting her head to the stone floor as a vertical river of liquid tar.  He moved his right, spirit-charged hand closer to her chest, brushing his fingers over her full breasts with lecherous pleasure.  Kagura’s spirit seemed to strain to escape Naraku’s hand, eager to occupy a body once more, and Byakuya flinched as crackling arcs of electricity suddenly began leaping from point to point along the spherical stone chamber’s curved wall.  Similarly, outside the castle, much larger, more violent arcs jumped around the interior of the energy barrier surrounding Naraku’s island.

            “There’s a lot of energy in the air,” Byakuya said with mounting concern.  The scent of ozone filled his nose.  He decided that if the underground chamber, the castle above, and the island supporting it all was about to suddenly blow themselves to bits, the safest place to be was near Naraku and so he did not move.  “I think the gods are angry.  They protest this, what you’re about to do with Kagura.”

            Naraku chuckled, slipping his right hand into Kagura’s chest as he had done with his own.  He took hold of her beating heart, cupping his palm to it to give her spirit the conductivity it needed.  “Kagura’s name means ‘dance of the gods.’  Literally, ‘god entertainment.’  The gods don’t protest.  They _celebrate!_ ”

            Kagura’s spirit flashed out of Naraku’s hand with a vengeance and soaked into its new body’s heart.  It decompressed and spread out through its new body to assert itself, finding nerve pathways and journeying up into its new brain.  Instantly, consciousness dawned within Kagura’s brain as her body and spirit ceased to be separate, rejoined at last.  Her eyes began to move beneath her elegantly-lashed eyelids and Byakuya took notice.

            “She’s dreaming,” Byakuya awed.  Only a few seconds had passed since Naraku had implanted Kagura’s spirit in its new body and already, the wind sorceress was experiencing something similar to rapid-eye-movement sleep.  “What could she possibly be dreaming about so _soon?_ ”

**-To be continued-**


	11. Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June, 1549: Kagura has defied Naraku by releasing the demonic golem Moryomaru from the prison the dark hanyou sealed him in.  Now serving Moryomaru, she moves to kill Kohaku, Sango’s younger brother, and relieve him of the shard of the Shikon no Tama embedded in his back.  She changes her mind at the last moment and with some help from InuYasha and his pack, she protects Kohaku from Hakudoshi in a battle that sees the vile demon-child put down for good…

 

**(Continued from pt. 1)**

            “She’s dreaming,” Byakuya awed.  Only a few seconds had passed since Naraku had implanted Kagura’s spirit in its new body and already, the wind sorceress was experiencing something similar to rapid-eye-movement sleep.  “What could she possibly be dreaming about so _soon?_ ”

~~~~

(Following section is transcribed from Volume 37, Scroll Nine of the InuYasha manga, “The Location of the Infant”)

**(Soundtrack: Angel Witch – Angel Witch)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXH_9707PLc** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXH_9707PLc)

_June, 1549_

            Overcast skies and eerie mist shrouded a mountain range in the northern end of Honshu, Japan’s main island.  Deep within a stalagmite and stalactite filled cave penetrating the side of one such mountain, Kagura stood before Moryomaru, the twenty-foot-tall, two-thousand-pound golem-like suit of living armor that Hakudoshi _,_ Naraku’s eighth incarnation, had created to house the ‘Infant,’ Naraku’s demonic heart personified.  Hakudoshi and the Infant began life as one being, but a desperate, last-ditch attack by a Buddhist monk it encountered during one of Naraku’s missions had split it in two.  Half of that being became Hakudoshi and the other half became the Infant.  With all the physical ability of an actual newborn, the Infant was extremely vulnerable, especially to those that could recognize him as Naraku’s heart, so Hakudoshi created Moryomaru and enclosed the Infant within him for his safety, though hardly out of any altruism or camaraderie.  To kill the Infant would kill Naraku and every single one of his remaining incarnations at once, Hakudoshi included.

            Perceiving themselves as ‘real’ and Naraku as a ‘shell,’ Hakudoshi, the Infant, and Moryomaru plotted to overthrow and destroy their oni lord ‘father.’  Unaware that Hakudoshi had placed the Infant inside Moryomaru and desperate for her freedom from Naraku, Kagura allied herself with Moryomaru by releasing him from a prison that Naraku had sealed him in, seeing him as a means to rid herself of Naraku’s control.  Now, she followed him to provide whatever support she could and assist him in killing Naraku, though she had begun to lament that she had merely exchanged one psychopathic master for another.

            At this point, Moryomaru had been seriously injured in a skirmish with InuYasha and Sesshomaru, causing him and Kagura to seek concealment in a mountain cave.  The inu brothers had used their super-swords to cleave or vaporize half of Moryomaru’s body and now, the demonic golem worked to repair himself by absorbing a cache of demon corpses he had left behind in the cave, one of several he had prepared.

            Kagura’s temper flared as she watched Moryomaru suck in raw demonic flesh and heal the damage InuYasha and Sesshomaru had caused.  Her eyes, like shimmering rubies, gleamed with anger as she looked upon the disgusting sight.  She had taken a serious risk in allying herself with him and it looked like he would end up being just another notch on the hilt of Sesshomaru’s or InuYasha’s sword.  “Now what?” she demanded of Moryomaru, her voice sultry and silky-smooth, like a female version of Naraku’s.  It was disturbingly sexy to anyone that heard it.  “Rebuild your body and fight them again?  It’s _useless!_ ”

            Moryomaru glared viciously at Kagura, his dark violet eyes holding cold fury after his lost battle against InuYasha and Sesshomaru.  Given that he could stand at a height of twenty feet, even as he knelt before his cache of demon corpses, he was more than ten feet tall, utterly towering over Kagura.  His long-limbed body was grotesque and muscular, misshapen yet brimming with incredible demonic power.  His face, however, was strikingly handsome.  With a strange, crescent-shaped, blue-and-green tattoo covering the upper left quarter of his face and shoulder-length lavender hair framing it all, he was probably one of the best-looking monsters in Japan.  His battle with InuYasha and Sesshomaru had damaged those good-looks, though.  The side of his face not covered by his tattoo was covered instead with deep cracks, as if his face was made of dried clay and InuYasha had punched him squarely in it.  As a result of his personal vanity, he had little patience for Kagura’s venting.

            Kagura grunted in pain as a tendril of Moryomaru’s unbound demon flesh shot out from him and seized her by a bare ankle, yanking her off her feet so that she landed hard on her back, on the cave’s stone floor.  Moryomaru turned around to loom over her with his intimidating size.  “Bring Kohaku to me,” he commanded to her.

            “ _Kohaku?_ ” Kagura repeated the name of the taijiya Sango’s younger brother, sitting upright on the stone floor as Moryomaru continued to hold her by her ankle.

            “I want that Shikon shard that’s embedded in his back,” Moryomaru explained.  “I’m going to use it.”

            Kagura’s gorgeous ruby eyes widened at the implications of Moryomaru’s plan.  “You’re planning to deceive Naraku?”

            Moryomaru smiled coyly.  “Heh…I know you too seek Naraku’s death, Kagura,” he said.  “Which is why you’ve been trying to sniff out his weaknesses.”

            The tendril of demon flesh Moryomaru had wrapped around Kagura’s ankle began to squeeze, causing the wind sorceress to tense in rising discomfort.  “It was you…who gave Sesshomaru the clue to finding Naraku’s heart,” Moryomaru continued.  “Am I right?”

            Kagura blinked with incredulity.  _How could he know about that?_   “And it was you who gave Kohaku those crystals of demonic energy,” Moryomaru revealed further, his smile growing wider, more sadistic at Kagura’s shocked expression.  “Yes, I know.”

            The ‘crystals of demonic energy’ Moryomaru spoke of were those made by the sentient demon-mountain _Gakusanjin_.  They changed color in the presence of the _Fuyoheki_ , the ‘Nulling Stone,’ another product of Gakusanjin’s which concealed demonic auras.  Naraku stole the stone and gave it to the Infant soon after creating him so as to hide his demonic aura from his aura-sensing enemies.  Anyone possessing one of Gakusanjin’s crystals would see it turn green when the Nulling Stone was near, and finding it meant he or she had found Naraku’s heart.  Kagura had given such crystals to both Sesshomaru and Kohaku in the hopes that at least one of them would succeed in finding the Infant and killing it.

            _He’s reading my thoughts!_   Kagura looked down at her leg to see that Moryomaru’s tendril of demon flesh had transformed into two humanoid arms, like those of a child, their child-like hands pushing her kimono up her legs and pressing their palms to her bare calf.  Dark magic allowed her thoughts to travel from her body, through those tiny hands, and into Moryomaru.  _Those hands…are they the Infant’s?_ Kagura asked of herself, her blood cooling in her veins by the realization coming over her.  _That means…Naraku’s heart is inside Moryomaru!_   Kagura connected the dots with escalating horror: if the Infant was inside Moryomaru and had been the entire time, and she had given Sesshomaru and Kohaku the shards of demonic energy so that they could find and kill the Infant, then by setting Moryomaru free from Naraku’s prison, she had betrayed Naraku for another master whom she had betrayed already.  _Oh, fuck_.

            Moryomaru gave a sick laugh and retracted the Infant’s arms from Kagura’s leg.  He then jabbed several sharp tendrils of his demon flesh directly into her leg, his tendrils not simply piercing her, but _bonding_ with her, inside and out.  “So what?” Moryomaru asked of Kagura.  “I could just absorb you right here.”

            Kagura shook and struggled as Moryomaru forced his tendrils further up and into her leg.  She was perhaps _seconds_ from being eaten alive by the horrible golem before her.  “Please, stop,” she begged.  “ _Stop!_   I’ll…I’ll do whatever you want.”

            “That’s a good girl,” Moryomaru whispered approvingly, keeping his tendrils embedded in Kagura’s leg so as to remain able to read her thoughts.  “From the moment you defied Naraku’s orders and released me from my prison, you serve _me_.  So…if you wish to go on living, then you will help me make my body stronger.  Strong enough to surpass Naraku.  That’s your only choice.”

            “Surpass Naraku...” Kagura considered.  “You mean with the Shikon shard?”  Kagura thought carefully: Moryomaru wanted the Shikon shard embedded in Kohaku’s back, but the shard sustained Kohaku’s life.  _If it’s removed, he’ll die_.  _But what difference does it make?  He’ll die anyway, soon enough…_

            “That’s right,” Moryomaru confirmed, reading Kagura’s mind again.  “Either Naraku is going to take Kohaku’s shard, or I am.  That’s the only difference.”

~~~~

(Following section is transcribed from the InuYasha manga’s Volume 37, Scroll Ten: “Kagura’s Decision,” Volume 38, Scroll One: “Hakudoshi’s Scheme,” and Volume 38, Scroll Two: “Hakudoshi’s End.”)

            Meanwhile, Kohaku, Sango’s younger brother, did not simply run, but _bounded_ up the side of a mountain in the same range as the one where Moryomaru had made his lair.  His long, dark brown ponytail danced in the oncoming wind by the speed with which he moved.  The Shikon shard in his back gave him enhanced speed, strength, and almost unlimited stamina, allowing him to move faster, further, longer than most any other human in the world, past, present, or future.  He was moving up a 60-percent grade faster than most people could _fall_ down it.

            Kohaku was just a few miles away from where Moryomaru and Kagura sheltered.  He used the crystal that Kagura had given him to seek out Naraku’s heart, watching it gradually change color by his decreasing distance to the Nulling Stone the Infant carried.  When he found the Infant, he fully intended to take his _kusarigama_ , his chain-sickle made from demonic bone, and cleave the evil baby in half.  He only hoped that its remains wouldn’t grow into _another_ set of monsters.  He wondered if he wouldn’t have to chop the Infant into little bits then _incinerate_ them.  He decided that if he did have to, it would be one the _less_ gruesome things he’d ever done…

            A powerful gust of wind accosted Kohaku as Kagura dropped in on him from above, landing a few yards ahead of him up the mountain slope.  “Kagura!” he called, greeting her with simultaneous excitement and fear.  “Naraku’s heart is nearby!”

            “Yes, it is,” Kagura answered coolly.  The space in her chest where her heart should have been clenched painfully; she was heartless only in the most literal sense.  She didn’t want to kill Kohaku, she considered him a friend, perhaps her _only_ friend.  They were both victims of Naraku in one way or another and they had both done terrible things by his order or manipulation.  She even thought that if the adolescent taijiya was a few years older… _No, it’s best not to think of such things.  I have to kill him now_.  _I’m sorry, Kohaku_.

            By Naraku’s design, Kagura’s primary weapon was an enchanted folding paper fan.  She held it in her right hand and flicked it open, sweeping it toward Kohaku to cast her Fuujin no Mai, her _Dance of Blades_ at him.  The Dance was a whirlwind of spinning blades made of highly-compressed air.  When the blades contacted something solid, they either sliced clean through it or exploded with the force of a small, yet very powerful cannon shell.  Kohaku’s reflexes and Shikon-enhanced speed allowed him to leap out of the blades’ path just in time.  They hit the ground at his feet and exploded to blast heavy chunks of granite in all directions for dozens of yards.  “Just die here and now,” Kagura spoke, her voice carrying a grim weariness.  “You have no hope of winning anymore.”

            “ _Kagura!_ ” Kohaku cried out as he landed on his feet, not understanding why the wind sorceress was suddenly trying to kill him.  As she considered him her friend, he considered her as his. “Kagura, _why?_   Naraku’s heart is nearby!  We’ve got to strike it down!”  He held up the crystals the wind sorceress had given him.  “I thought you gave me these crystals because you wanted to get rid of Naraku, too!”

            “Things have changed, Kohaku,” Kagura answered, angling her fan for another volley.  “Either way, you’re going to die.  I’m sorry.  I can promise that you’ll at least die _painlessly_.”

            Kagura launched her second volley at Kohaku, giving him less time to evade.  Tiny bits of hot, pulverized stone rained down on Kohaku as he dodged, bouncing harmlessly off of his taijiya armor but stinging his skin as they struck his face and the back of his neck.

            “Naraku’s heart…the Infant, it’s inside a demon called Moryomaru, now,” Kagura said as she advanced on Kohaku, trying to give him the dignity of an explanation before she murdered him.  “He wants to use the Shikon shard that’s inside of you to grow stronger.”

            Kohaku backed away from Kagura carefully so as to not lose his footing on the mountain slope, mindful of her demonic speed and strength.  Even without her fan, she could pounce on him with lightning speed and then, it would be all over for him.  “So you’re here to take the shard…and let me _die?_ ”

            Leaping from place to place upon the mountain slope, Kagura maneuvered herself so that she backed Kohaku up against a wall, cornering him.  “If I don’t, he’ll kill _me._ ”

            “Then, there’s no reason for us to fight,” Kohaku said, relaxing his stance and standing fully upright before Kagura.  “I’ll go willingly.  Take me to him…if that will save you.”

            Kagura stopped her advance, her glossy ruby lips falling agape.  Kohaku would sacrifice himself for _her?_   Was he _insane?_   “Kohaku, you have to believe me,” she spoke, her blood red eyes softening with emotion.  “You don’t stand a chance against Moryomaru.”

            “But I still have to try!” Kohaku shouted.  “Even if I die in the attempt, I’ll at least get _one_ blow in!”

            “But that’s all it will be,” Kagura warned.  “One blow.”

            “I killed my father and whole villages with my hands while under Naraku’s influence,” Kohaku seethed.  “And I added to my sins by hurting my sister, physically and emotionally, over and over.  The only reason I’ve fought to stay alive this long is for the chance to pay Naraku back.  That’s my mission, and unless I’m willing to die to achieve it, I’ll never be able to apologize to my father and the others in the underworld.”

            _But, Kohaku…it’s pointless!_   Kagura thought to herself.  _I understand why you want to kill him, but a single blow isn’t going to hurt Moryomaru at all.  He’ll just go ahead and extract your Shikon shard.  As for me, I’ll only be switching masters from Naraku to that terrible Infant._

            A sense of profound helplessness overtook Kagura and in that moment, she made her decision.  She made another swipe of her fan, producing a blast of wind so fast that Kohaku couldn’t hope to avoid it.  Her target was no longer Kohaku himself, though.  Her wind blast slapped the crystal of demon energy that she had given him out of his hand, knocking it well out of his reach.  “The crystal!” Kohaku shouted, diving for it.  Before he could pick it back up, though, Kagura launched a Dance of Blades at it, pulverizing it into useless crystal dust.

            “Now you have no way to find Naraku’s heart!” Kagura said, collapsing her magic fan.

            “Kagura, _why?_ ” Kohaku asked again with a cry.

            “Shut up!” Kagura snapped.  She had realized that regardless of whether it was Naraku, Moryomaru, Hakudoshi, InuYasha, Sesshomaru, Koga, or _whoever_ that killed her, she was _dead_.  She decided that if she couldn’t avoid her own death, then she had no reason to send Kohaku to his.  At least this way, she was maximizing his life span.  “Just…just _go!_ ”

            Kohaku stilled.  Kagura was letting him go?  “Kagura, I…” he began, but the wind sorceress interrupted him.

            “I told you!” Kagura continued.  “With your shard, Moryomaru is just going to get stronger.  Not only will you die in vain, but you’ll make it even harder to get at that Infant inside him.”

            “ _Feh_ ,” a young, yet sinister male voice muttered.  “I knew we couldn’t trust you.”  A massive orb of demonic energy manifested itself near Kagura and Kohaku, a short, slender humanoid figure appearing within it.  Wearing billowing white robes that belied his black heart, his eyes and hair color were not unlike Moryomaru’s or the Infant inside the demonic golem.  A magenta energy barrier much like one of Naraku’s surrounded him.  “First you betray Naraku, and now you betray Moryomaru, as well!”

            “Hakudoshi!” Kagura yowled, recognizing Naraku’s eighth incarnation instantly and poising herself for a fight.  “You’re one to talk, since you’re trying to betray Naraku _yourself!_ ”

            Hakudoshi only smiled and Kagura continued.  “I’m finally starting to understand,” the wind sorceress said.  Kohaku glanced at her with uncertainty.  “You and that Infant were originally one being, and Moryomaru is a demon the two of you created.  Now he’s acting according to the Infant’s will, and you’re scheming to supplant Naraku!”

            “Well, Kagura,” Hakudoshi chuckled, impressed with the female youkai’s intelligence.  “You’re smarter than I thought.”

            Kagura placed herself directly between Kohaku and Hakudoshi to protect the young taijiya.  “Run, Kohaku!” she ordered.

            “Huh?” Kohaku asked rather vapidly.

            “Don’t you _understand?_ ” Kagura shouted at Kohaku over a shoulder.  “Hakudoshi wants your Shikon shard, too!”

            Hakudoshi gave no more time to talk.  Lowering his barrier, he used his demonic energy to propel himself through the air, lunging at Kagura and Kohaku.  He carried a seven-foot bladed polearm as a weapon and raised it to strike, swinging it downward to cast a swath of searing hot youki at his prey as InuYasha might use Tetsuseiga’s Wound of the Wind.

            “Get _back!_ ” Kagura snarled, half at Hakudoshi, half at Kohaku.  She snapped her magic fan open and swept it at Hakudoshi to counter his youki wave with a Dance of Blades.  The blades of wind cut through Hakudoshi’s youki easily, but the Infant’s other half raised his barrier once more, not merely blocking Kagura’s attack, but _absorbing_ it.

            “ _Hmph,_ ” Hakudoshi pouted at Kagura.  “Want a taste of your own medicine, your precious Dance of Blades?”

            Hakudoshi’s barrier glowed and vibrated as it took that Dance of Blades that Kagura had fired and shot it right back at her.  Kagura and Kohaku leapt back with a cry as the wind blades pummeled into the stony ground they had been standing on just seconds before, blasting it into rocky shrapnel.  Hakudoshi laughed proudly at his handiwork.  “Very nice.  How did _that_ feel?” he asked of Kagura.

            “Ha!  I’m better at manipulating the wind than you’ll _ever_ be!” Kagura shot back.  She was confident in her own abilities versus Hakudoshi, but she didn’t need Kohaku around to get hurt.  She drew one of her tiny white feathers she wore in her bound, glossy-black hair and turned to show it to her taijiya friend.  “Kohaku!  You’ll have to figure out how to get off on your own!”

            Kagura threw her feather at Kohaku’s booted feet and the tiny thing suddenly exploded in size, going from two or three inches in length to more than ten feet in the space of less than a second.  The wind sorceress then called on her winds to slip underneath the feather and carry it and Kohaku high into the sky, away from her and Hakudoshi at high speed.

            “ _Kagura!_ ” Kohaku yelled out as Kagura’s feather spirited him away from the scene of battle.

            “You’re not getting away!” Hakudoshi scowled as he disengaged from Kagura and accelerated after Kohaku.  At this point, InuYasha and his pack arrived on the scene, with InuYasha carrying Kagome on his back, while Miroku, Sango, and a still-tiny Shippo rode Kirara.  Once he was within Tetsuseiga range, InuYasha slowed his run enough to let Kagome down to the rocky ground safely, then drew Tetsuseiga, sped back up, and took Hakudoshi by surprise with a Wound of the Wind broadside.  Having become _intimately_ familiar with it by being blasted directly with it and losing most of her clothes to it on at least one occasion, Kagura recognized the sound and the pattern of the Wound instantly.  She turned to see InuYasha running up the mountain slope toward her and Hakudoshi with Tetsuseiga drawn.  His friends were right behind him.

            Miroku recognized that Kohaku had no control over Kagura’s feather as it carried him off and leapt off of Kirara once the fire-cat had descended low enough to the ground.  “Sango, you go after Kohaku!” he suggested forcefully to his taijiya love, to which Sango replied: “Right!”

            Miroku joined InuYasha, Kagome, and Shippo on the ground.  As Sango rode Kirara back into the sky and called out Kohaku’s name, she pondered what she had just seen.  _Back there, Kagura forced Kohaku to leave, as if to get him away from Hakudoshi!_

            Meanwhile, InuYasha’s Wound of the Wind had forced Hakudoshi to stop and reinforce his barrier against it.  Gripping Tetsuseiga tightly, the ivory-haired hanyou warrior and his friends, minus Sango and Kirara, approached Kagura and Hakudoshi cautiously.  They had seen the two incarnations of Naraku exchanging blows from a distance before intervening.  “What the hell’s going on here?” InuYasha asked gruffly.  “What’s this about, Kagura?  Why are you and Hakudoshi fighting?”

            Kagura shook her head, returning her attention to Hakudoshi and watching his barrier fluctuate and crackle with flares of demonic energy.  “I don’t have time to explain!” she answered.

            Hakudoshi could only laugh as his barrier prepared to return the demonic energy of InuYasha’s sword to him, as it had done with Kagura’s Dance of Blades.  “He’s shooting back your Wound of the Wind!” Kagome warned to InuYasha.  Swiftly, InuYasha slipped an arm around Kagome’s waist and Shippo clung his lightweight body to Miroku’s robes as they threw themselves out of the reflected Wound’s path, its energy talons eating up the ground they had stood on moments before.  With them distracted momentarily, Hakudoshi thrust himself at Kagura, seeking to cut her down with his polearm.

            Kagura parried Hakudoshi with a blast from her magic fan, scowling at her much more evil ‘brother’ in irritation.  “ _Hmph._ Trying to shut me up, eh?”

            “Kagura, you’ve lived too long,” Hakudoshi replied coldly as he set himself up for another run at the wind sorceress.

            With Kagura standing too close to Hakudoshi for him to use one of Tetsuseiga’s more destructive powers without hurting her, InuYasha leapt at Hakudoshi and brought Tetsuseiga’s blade down upon the demon-child’s lavender-haired head.  Hakudoshi’s barrier prevented the blade from doing any damage, but InuYasha succeeded in deflecting him from Kagura.  The hanyou warrior landed between them, facing Hakudoshi squarely but facing _away_ from Kagura, one of his most powerful enemies.

            Kagura’s expression softened at InuYasha’s act of protecting her.  She knew she didn’t deserve such protection, especially from someone she’d tried to kill on several occasions. “InuYasha…” she began with a hushed tone, before scrounging up some more of her ordinary vocal bite.  “You sure you should be showing your back to _me?_ ”

            “ _Feh!_ ” InuYasha barked at Kagura over a shoulder, keeping Hakudoshi well within his peripheral vision.  “Make a move on me and you’ll be dead before you reach me!”

            Standing on the sidelines of the InuYasha/Kagura/Hakudoshi skirmish, Miroku, Kagome, and Shippo could only watch in disbelief as InuYasha defended _Kagura_ , of all people, from Hakudoshi.  Just as unbelievable, Kagura did not take advantage of her position at InuYasha’s back.  “I really think Kagura was protecting Kohaku from Hakudoshi,” Kagome commented to Miroku. 

            Miroku agreed.  “I believe you’re right,” he said to Kagome.  “And there’s only one reason for either Hakudoshi or Naraku to attack Kohaku: to get the Shikon shard embedded in him!”

            Hakudoshi refrained from attacking InuYasha and Kagura head on, seeming content to simply levitate inside his protective barrier.  At the same time, InuYasha held his position, not attacking either, for he knew Hakudoshi’s barrier could toss back most anything he could throw at it.  “Kagura!” he addressed harshly.  “Just spit out everything you know!  Unless you think you can trust Hakudoshi more.  I mean, _maybe_ he’s hanging around to make sure you’re okay, but I’m betting it’s to make sure you’re dead.”

            “ _Mm_ ,” Kagura confirmed.  “It’s because he doesn’t want the Infant’s location revealed.”

            Miroku and Kagome took special notice at the mention of Naraku’s heart.  “Kagura, did you just say the _Infant?_ ” the monk asked.  “Naraku is concealing his heart by erasing his demonic energy.  Which is why when we found that Moryomaru wasn’t emitting energy, we assumed that _he_ was Naraku’s heart.  We didn’t notice the Infant had disappeared!”

            Kagura glanced at Miroku, clearly aching to answer.  “Go ahead, Kagura,” Hakudoshi permitted.  “Tell them.”

            InuYasha saw Hakudoshi’s barrier fluctuate and began to disappear.  “His shield’s fading, and so is _he!_ ” he warned to his friends.  “Getting ready to vanish?  Not if I can help it!”

            InuYasha raised Tetsuseiga high and swung it down at Hakudoshi.  “ _Kongosoha!_ ” he roared, unleashing the _Diamond Spear Blast_.  Hundreds of foot-long flechettes of barrier-piercing diamond shot forth from Tetsuseiga’s blade, barreling toward Hakudoshi in a tightly-focused stream.  Just before the spears reached him, Hakudoshi and his barrier disappeared and the spears flew on to be lost to the sky in a ballistic trajectory.

            Hakudoshi reappeared a split-second later _behind_ InuYasha, enveloping Kagura within his barrier.  InuYasha spun around to face them and Kagura pounded her fists against the barrier’s transparent wall in a futile attempt to escape her vile brother.  “Now then,” Hakudoshi gloated at the success of his little maneuver.

            “Damn you!” InuYasha spat, aiming Tetsuseiga at Hakudoshi again.

            “Well, InuYasha?” Hakudoshi baited to the hanyou warrior, daring him to attack.  “Try to cut me again.  And Kagura, too, while you’re at it.”

            InuYasha growled like the dog demon he was, baring his sharp incisors in frustration.  Through Hakudoshi’s barrier, Kagura looked at him with composed terror, anticipating the ripping burn of his Diamond Spear Blast tearing her and Hakudoshi to pieces.  It didn’t come, as InuYasha lowered Tetsuseiga slightly.  He refrained from taking another shot, to Kagura’s surprise.  _He’s not going to do it?_ Kagura thought to herself, holding her breath.   _Agh!  InuYasha, you’re a naïve fool!_

            Hakudoshi laughed aloud as InuYasha held his fire.  “What a surprise…” he noted, looking down at Kagura as she sat at the bottom of his spherical barrier.  “That even _you_ can serve as my shield.”

            “You _idiot!_ ” Kagura cursed and swept her magic fan at Hakudoshi within his barrier at point-blank range.  Her Dance of Blades sliced his lithe body in two, cutting him at the waist.  The demon-child’s expression did not flinch in the least, as he felt absolutely no pain.  “Listen!  The Infant…” she shouted to InuYasha and Kagome.  “It’s _inside_ Moryomaru!  Hakudoshi’s scheming with it to make Moryomaru stronger, so they can take on Naraku!”

            InuYasha, Kagome, and Miroku were taken aback by this.  “You both Hakudoshi and the Infant…have turned _against_ Naraku?” InuYasha asked of Kagura.

            Hakudoshi gave a sinister laugh.  “Naraku made a mistake when he took his heart out of his body,” the demon-child said.  “He gave the Infant the Fuyoheki to erase signs of his energy, as a sort of armor for his heart.  But then the Infant had a most clever idea.  To create an armor of his own: _Moryomaru!_   And then we realized something.  As Naraku made Moryomaru stronger and stronger, always thinking that he was protecting his heart, he only pushed it further from his own reach, until finally, we knew that _we_ held the power.”

            The halves of Hakudoshi’s body, split by Kagura’s magic fan, knit back together.  Kagura sneered at him.  “Moron.  Do you really think Naraku’s going to let that happen?” she pointed.

            Hakudoshi gave Kagura a sardonic smile.  “Shouldn’t you worry about _yourself_ , Kagura?” he posed to her.  “We may be as disloyal to Naraku as you, but he actually possesses your heart.”

            InuYasha, Kagome, and Miroku looked to Kagura.  Naraku possessed her _heart?_   For his own part, InuYasha angled his furry dog ears to focus them Kagura, using his incredible inu hanyou hearing to listen to her chest.  He heard no heartbeat.  He could hear her blood moving rhythmically through her body, entering and leaving her lungs to take in oxygen and offload carbon dioxide waste as normal, but no organ drove its movement.  He realized that if Naraku actually had possession of her heart, then Kagura was in grave danger no matter where she went or what she did.  He also realized that Naraku’s possession of her heart was probably the mechanism he used to control her, force her to fight against him and his pack.

            “Just give up, Kagura,” Hakudoshi suggested to Kagura, in much the same way she spoke to Kohaku earlier.  “Naraku’s going to kill you either way.  So why not join with _us_ , and at least help us make him suffer?  And do so…from _inside_ Moryomaru!”

            “Oh, God,” Kagome hushed.  “He wants Moryomaru to absorb Kagura!”

            “Give me a break!” Kagura spat at Hakudoshi, swinging her fan at him again.  This time, she cleaved his body into more than two pieces, blasting him until little bits of cloth and demon flesh floated around inside the barrier.

            Hakudoshi cackled defiantly, his head severed from the rest of him.  “Slash my body all you want, Kagura.  I won’t die.”

            “ _Damn you_ …” Kagura hissed.

            “No one can kill _me_ ,” Hakudoshi boasted as his body began to reform.  “Not even _Naraku_.”

            Somewhere far away, shrouded in darkness, Naraku himself observed Hakudoshi’s disloyal behavior through the magic mirror of Kanna, his very first incarnation.  He cracked an evil smile, and suddenly, Hakudoshi’s barrier _shattered_.

            Miroku, Kagome, and Shippo leapt back as Hakudoshi’s barrier blew apart, exposing the demon-child to direct attack and freeing Kagura.  Manipulating her winds, Kagura guided herself to land upright on the mountain slope below her, landing in an elegant crouch.  She looked up at Hakudoshi in bewilderment, realizing that somehow, Naraku had destroyed Hakudoshi’s barrier remotely.  That meant the oni lord knew of everything that had transpired, especially her _betrayal!_

            With Hakudoshi’s barrier gone, InuYasha saw his opportunity to strike.  “It’s now or never!  _Kaze no Kizu!_ ”

            Hakudoshi grunted as the Wound of the Wind slammed over him, slicing his head in two and disintegrating most everything else.  He floated in the air as a dispersed cloud of pulverized matter, but as before, he began to recompose himself.  “He’s forming again!” Kagome cried.

            Miroku unfastened the gauntlet that muzzled his _Kazaana_ , aiming to suck up Hakudoshi’s shredded body before he could repair himself.  “ _Heh._ Just try it,” Hakudoshi’s damaged head dared.  He summoned several dozen _saimyosho_ , poison demon insects, to his side.

            Miroku hesitated to unleash Kazaana, fearing the effect of saimyosho poison on him if he sucked in too many of the winged insectoid horrors.  Then, all at once, the saimyosho turned and flew away, leaving Hakudoshi alone against InuYasha and the others once more.

            “The saimyosho flew off!” Kagome pointed.

            Again, Kagura perceived the invisible, puppet-master hand of Naraku’s intervention.  The saimyosho had departed… _on Naraku’s orders_.  Knowing that he was vulnerable without the saimyosho covering him, Hakudoshi deployed a heavy mist of his poisonous miasma around him, to prevent Miroku from using Kazaana.

            “I’ll clear it up!” Kagome shouted to Miroku.  Armed with her miko’s longbow, she drew an arrow from the quiver she wore over her back and fed her purifying reiki into it.  The arrow shot forth as a brilliant blue comet, its holy light searing Hakudoshi’s choking violet miasma cloud right off him.  By this time, the lavender-haired demon-child had reformed his upper body.  Armed with his polearm once more and as if in his death throes, he made a desperate attack on the person nearest to him: Kagura.

            “Hakudoshi, you _bastard!_ ” InuYasha snarled.  He and Kagome were helpless to save Kagura this time.  They were too far away to reach Kagura in time and again, Kagura’s proximity to Hakudoshi ruled out the use of the Wound of the Wind or one of Kagome’s purifying arrows.

            As Hakudoshi bore down on Kagura, he spoke to himself in mantras.  _I am *not* like Kagura!  I am *not* Naraku’s tool!  I am my *own* master!_   Before he could touch his polearm’s blade to Kagura’s throat, the calm air around the mountain over which he flew suddenly became like that of a typhoon, flowing horizontally to the ground and converging upon the center of Miroku’s cursed right hand.  “ _Kazaana!_ ” Miroku bellowed.

            Without his miasma to protect him, Hakudoshi lay completely vulnerable to Miroku at last.  Kazaana devoured Hakudoshi’s shredded body ravenously, and the demon-child screamed helplessly as it finally sucked up his head.  Hakudoshi took his last glimpse of daylight before Miroku snuffed him out permanently by clamping Kazaana’s muzzle onto his hand.  “It’s done,” the houshi spoke.  Another of Naraku’s incarnations had fallen.

            “Yeah,” InuYasha said of Hakudoshi’s death, a single word the only eulogy that came to his mind.  Killing Hakudoshi was definitely a victory, but he felt no inclination to celebrate.

            “Though I don’t feel terribly pleased,” Miroku voiced similar thoughts to InuYasha’s, contemplating his cursed hand and the danger it posed to not only his enemies, but to himself and the people he cared about.  “I can’t help thinking that Naraku used us.”

            “Probably,” InuYasha agreed, sheathing Tetsuseiga.  “He didn’t have any further use for Hakudoshi, so he wanted us to get rid of him.”

            Kagura sat nearby, recovering from the stress of first nearly killing Kohaku, then nearly being killed herself by Hakudoshi.  Kagome noticed her in her uncharacteristically inert state and approached cautiously.  “Kagura, what are you going to do now?” the miko from the future asked.

            Kagura looked up at Kagome, seeing genuine concern in the miko’s eyes.  _How fucking ironic_.  _Kagome cares about *me.*  The people who care about me most are the ones Naraku created me to kill!_

            InuYasha and Miroku looked to Kagura, as well.  “Naraku surely knows about your betrayal,” Miroku said to the wind sorceress, while InuYasha held his tongue.

            “Um…Kagura?” Kagome addressed uncertainly.  “You could join us if you want.”

            Kagura flinched visibly.  Kagome was so pure-hearted, so completely devoid of malice.  The miko would extend a figurative olive branch to her even after all the things Naraku had and _hadn’t_ ordered her to do.  Part of her wanted very badly to join up with them, for some company if not for protection, but she shook her head in dismissal.  “No.  That won’t do you any good,” said.  “In fact, shouldn’t you be on your way already?

            “ _Way?”_ Kagome wondered.

            “Well, yeah,” Kagura explained, rising to her feet.  “Can’t you track Moryomaru by the Shikon shard he stole?  And I don’t think you want to waste any time…given that he’s after Kohaku’s shard.”

            InuYasha, Kagome, and Miroku looked among each other, knowing that Kagura was right.  “As for me, I’ve had enough of you people,” Kagura added, rather back-handedly to the ones who had just saved her life.  “Goodbye.”

            Kagura turned away from InuYasha and the others, pulling another of her magic feathers out of her hair and preparing to depart upon it.  “Kagura,” InuYasha called to her.  The stern, yet somehow soft tone in his voice caused her to pause and listen.  “To the list of things we’re going to do, we’ll _add_ bringing back your heart.  So until then, _stay alive_.  Got me?”

            A small smile graced Kagura’s ruby lips, but she did not turn around.  “Fine,” she replied, transforming her feather and riding it into the sky.  As she left InuYasha and his pack behind, she promised herself: _I’ll just keep running…as far as I have to._

 

**-To be continued-**


	12. Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June, 1549: Naraku brutally murders Kagura while InuYasha, Sesshomaru, and their packs fight with Moryomaru, the demonic golem that houses the Infant, Naraku’s heart given humanoid form.

**(Continued from pt. 2)**

Kagura turned away from InuYasha and the others, pulling one of her magic feathers out of her hair and preparing to depart upon it.  “Kagura,” InuYasha called to her.  The soft, yet stern and legitimately concerned tone in his voice caused her to pause and listen.  “To the list of things we’re going to do, we’ll _add_ bringing back your heart.  So until then, _stay alive_.  Got me?”

            A small smile graced Kagura’s ruby lips, but she did not turn around.  “Fine,” she replied nonchalantly, transforming her feather and riding it into the sky.  As she left InuYasha and his pack behind, she promised herself: _I’ll just keep running…as far as I have to._

~~~~

(The following is transcribed from the InuYasha manga’s Volume 38, Scrolls Three through Six:  “Kagura’s Heart,” “Pain Without End,” “Siblings,” and “The Wind.”)

**(Soundtrack: Blind Guardian – Fly)**

**<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6oNE2lT8R4> **

_June, 1549_

            Kagura flew west, away from the misty mountain on which Hakudoshi died as fast as she felt her giant, flimsy feather was able to withstand, no particular destination in mind.  Flying at treetop level above Japanese alpine forest, she projected an aerodynamically-shaped bubble of her youki around her to act as an invisible fairing and windshield, to prevent the oncoming air from whipping against her face and body by her high airspeed.  Right then, her main thought was to put a ridiculous distance between herself and anything or anyone that might attract Naraku’s attention.  A secondary thought for her was what she would actually do with herself when she finally reached wherever she was going.

            Kagura figured that the whole of Japan was probably off-limits to her from that moment onward.  As an incarnation of Naraku, she had inherited some of Naraku’s knowledge upon her ‘birth’ and that knowledge included some general geographic awareness.  She knew that a vast ocean lay to Japan’s east, one so large that she wasn’t certain she could cross it on her own.  The longest distance she had ever flown continuously was only a few dozen miles, and the eastern ocean was measured in _thousands_.  A set of much smaller, more easily traversed seas lay to Japan’s west and beyond that, a great landmass associated with names such as ‘China,’ ‘Korea,’ and ‘Russia.’  Therefore, Kagura flew west in hope of finding refuge in such places.

            As it happened, escaping Japan to begin with was wishful thinking for Kagura.  She had put only a few short miles between herself and InuYasha’s pack when Naraku conjured himself into existence mid-air directly in her path, just a few yards in front of her.  Kagura sneered and called upon her winds to decelerate herself and her feather as rapidly as she could, subjecting herself to almost a dozen ‘Gs’ to avoid crashing headlong into Naraku’s demonic energy barrier.

            Kagura’s throat went dry and a cold, hard terror gripped her as she sighted Naraku.  “It’s _you_ …” she spoke aloud, certain that Naraku could hear her, hushed as she was.  She greeted her creator with only his name, speaking flatly: “Naraku.”

            Surrounded by a magenta youki barrier, Naraku floated before Kagura in all of his darkly resplendent glory, clad in fine, collared robes and gleaming armor.  “Kagura,” he greeted back, his lips curling into a knowing smile.  “It seems Hakudoshi has died.  And _you_ helped it happen.”

            Kagura’s ruby eyes narrowed viciously, fully aware that Naraku was toying with her.  She remained still, as Naraku could easily catch her if she decided to flee.  Her top flight speed was limited to how hard she could get the winds to blow, whereas Naraku could convert his youki directly into thrust, his speed limited only by his barrier’s ability to cope with the heat buildup of atmospheric drag.  And he wouldn’t even need to chase her in the first place – if he really wanted to kill her quickly, he could simply crush her heart.  Naraku continued with a short, caustic eulogy of the late Hakudoshi: “He was such a dreamer.  It seems he thought he could take my place.”

            ‘ _Of course,_ ” Kagura thought.  Naraku knew about everything that Hakudoshi and the Infant/Moryomaru had been up to, to include everything she had done, as well. ‘ _He saw through the whole thing.  Which means…I’m next._ ’

            “Kagura,” Naraku spoke, savoring the wind witch’s lovely name and its meaning.  “How would you like your freedom?”

~~~~

            Some miles away from Naraku and Kagura, Sesshomaru, accompanied by an early-adolescent Rin, a customarily toad-like Jaken, and an ever double-headed Ah-Un, sought the lair where Moryomaru had taken refuge after he and InuYasha had given the monstrous demonic golem a good thrashing with their equally-demonic swords.  Right then, Jaken led the group, holding a small bundle of the youki-sensing crystals that Kagura had given to Sesshomaru.  Sesshomaru had entrusted the crystals to Jaken, ostensibly because at that moment, Sesshomaru had only one arm and needed it free for his swords at all times.  Being so short and short-legged, Jaken jogged as quickly as he could while still able to consult the crystals, so that ‘his’ Lord Sesshomaru would not be unnecessarily delayed from ending Moryomaru’s wretched life.

            Walking behind Jaken and beside Rin as she rode Ah-Un, Sesshomaru stopped abruptly, turning his silver-maned head to sniff the air and search the forested mountain horizon with focused golden eyes.  ‘ _Naraku’s scent…_ ’ he thought privately.  Of course, with his discerning dog demon nose, he smelled not only Naraku, but _Kagura_ , as well.  That the two of them were suddenly so close together, after all the subterfuge Kagura had committed against Naraku, was troubling to him.  Summoning an invisible current of his youki beneath him, Sesshomaru turned away from his small ‘pack’ and ascended into the sky in the direction that he smelled Naraku and Kagura.

            Jaken noticed that Sesshomaru was suddenly leaving Rin, Ah-Un, and himself behind, but did not follow.  A ‘standing order’ from Sesshomaru to him and the others stated that if the daiyoukai ever departed from them without explanation, they were not to follow unless explicitly told.  In all the years that Jaken had known Sesshomaru, whenever the demon lord excused himself, it was invariably for a good reason.  Still, the diminutive imp demon felt compelled to ask:  “Uh…my Lord?  Wh-where are you going?  That’s not the direction the crystal is indicating!”

~~~~

            InuYasha and Sesshomaru, along with their respective groups, had taken pursuit of Moryomaru independent of each other but at around the same time, covering around the same amount of ground.  Therefore, they were relatively close to each other, separated by a few miles at most, searching the same mountain range for Moryomaru’s hideout.  Having split off from InuYasha and the others temporarily, Sango flew atop Kirara, searching for Kohaku on her own after Kagura had sent him flying away from herself and the now-dead Hakudoshi on one of her magic feathers.  “ _Kohaku!_ ” she called out for her brother, her voice echoing off through the mountain valleys below her.  She thought to herself: ‘ _Where did he go?’_

            By this point, Kohaku had leapt off of Kagura’s feather once he felt it had descended low enough to the mountain slopes below.  Hearing Sango’s call, he crouched behind a rocky outcropping to hide himself from her, not answering her or otherwise trying to get her attention.  ‘ _Sister…’_ Kohaku begged Sango silently as she passed by in the distance, turning away from her and beginning to bound and leap over mountainside’s jagged, uneven terrain, resuming his own search for Moryomaru.  ‘ _Please.  Just leave.  I’ll take Naraku down by myself.  Even if it costs me my life.’_

Seeing no trace of Kohaku or the feather that Kagura had sent him flying on, Sango muttered to herself in defeat.  “I suppose there’s no point in just…!” The demon slayer silenced herself abruptly as Kirara gave a chilling feline growl that she could both hear and _feel_ through her thighs.  “Kirara?  What is it?”

            Kirara hissed viciously at the mouth of a nearby cave, one that did not appear to have formed naturally, but appeared intentionally melted, _bored_ into solid mountain granite.  The stalactites and stalagmites protruding from the cave’s top and bottom, respectively, made it look as if the cave mouth had _fangs._   “A cave…” Sango spoke ominously to herself and Kirara.  “There’s…something in there.”

            A spear-like tendril of demonic flesh burst out from the inside the mountain face beside the cave mouth, piercing solid stone and crossing several yards of empty air to wrap around one of Kirara’s flame-shrouded front paws.  Moryomaru was the source of that tendril and the demonic golem smashed his way out of his cave lair to bear down on Sango and Kirara from above.  “Moryomaru!” Sango shouted, trying to maneuver herself and Kirara away from the Infant’s living armor but unable to do so by the grip he had on Kirara’s paw.

            “Exterminator,” Moryomaru greeted Sango coldly.  “You’re by yourself?”  The monstrous demon tightened his tentacle around Kirara’s flaming paw, his tentacle’s flesh beginning to bond with the fire-cat’s.

            ‘ _No!  He’s going to absorb Kirara!’_ Sango realized, gripping her Hiraikotsu tightly and swinging it down upon Moryomaru’s tentacle as an axe, aiming carefully to avoid hitting Kirara’s paw.  The enchanted boomerang bone cut through Moryomaru’s flesh with ease, freeing Kirara from him with a sudden jolt of severed tension.  With a firm tug on her puffy mane, Sango then urged Kirara to pull away from Moryomaru rapidly as she cocked Hiraikotsu back and cast it forward, releasing it with a mighty cry.

            Moryomaru laughed as he _caught_ Hiraikotsu with ease, intentionally throwing it down the mountain slope below him so as to deny Sango its use.  He then sprouted two twenty-foot-long, bat-like wings from his shoulders.  A single flap of them gave him a great surge of thrust, and he lunged forward through the air at Sango and Kirara, forming one of his massive, misshapen arms into a giant spear and aiming to run the taijiya and her neko mount through.  Of course, the size of his arm meant that it would not pierce so much as _pulverize_ them into bloody mush.  Sango and Kirara dodged Moryomaru’s spear arm narrowly and Sango searched the ground frantically for her lost Hiraikotsu.

            Inadvertently, as Sango and Kirara flew to avoid Moryomaru’s attacks, they flew almost directly over Kohaku’s head as he ran, taking the younger taijiya by surprise.  Kagura had destroyed Kohaku’s youki-sensing crystal so that he couldn’t find Moryomaru directly, leaving him running effectively blind so that he blundered into his sister, her fire-cat friend, and Moryomaru himself by sheer accident.  Moryomaru followed immediately behind Sango and Kirara, lashing out at them with his tentacle spears with little regard for collateral damage, smashing through heavy rock formations with ease.  Kohaku leapt and somersaulted to avoid the broken rocks and boulders raining down on him, planning not to escape, but to _attack_.  This was basically what he had wanted all along: a direct confrontation with Moryomaru and the Infant inside!

            InuYasha, Kagome, Miroku, and Shippo made their way to the scene as quickly as they could, moving to catch up with Sango after she’d gone off after Kohaku.  InuYasha carried Kagome on his back while Miroku ran beside them, with Shippo clinging to one of Miroku’s shoulders.  Between InuYasha and Miroku, Miroku was the slower runner, and so without Kirara there for him to ride on, InuYasha had to limit his own speed so that he and the houshi didn’t become separated.

            “Hurry, InuYasha!” Kagome urged from her place on InuYasha’s back.  “I’m sensing two separate Shikon shards approaching each other _fast!_ ”

            “It must be Kohaku and Moryomaru!” Miroku concluded.  With Naraku in possession of the majority of the Shikon jewel, the only shards of it left in play were the single shards held by Moryomaru and Kohaku and the pair held by the wolf prince Koga.  Neither Miroku nor any of the others in InuYasha’s pack had seen Koga in a while, and the fact that the two shards ahead of them were moving independent of each other, rather than as a united pair, clearly identified their owners as Kohaku and Moryomaru.

            InuYasha and his friends were all acutely aware that Moryomaru sought Kohaku’s Shikon shard for himself.  “Okay, I’m speeding up!” InuYasha declared, seeking to come to Kohaku’s aid as quickly as possible.

            Right then, two of Moryomaru’s tentacles seized Kirara by her hind legs and slammed her down into the mountain below her with a sickening _crunch_ of buckling stone, taking Sango along for the ride and knocking both of them unconscious.  “Sister!” Kohaku cried out, rushing to aid Sango and Kirara as they lay defenseless on the rocky ground.

            Moryomaru descended upon Kohaku from above and landed just a few yards from him with a thunderous _thoom_ of great kinetic energy transmitting into solid stone.  Kohaku drew his kusarigama from his belt and braced himself to defend not only himself, but Sango and Kirara from Moryomaru’s attack.  For his own part, Moryomaru relished in the wild look in Kohaku’s chocolate brown eyes and flashed him an evil smile.  “Hello, Kohaku,” he said.

~~~~

            Kagura cocked her head at Naraku’s question to her.  “My _freedom?_ ” she asked.  Adrenaline began to flow through her blood and Naraku made no attempt to conceal the sadistic pleasure in his voice or the devilish gleam in his eyes.

            “Of course, Kagura,” Naraku confirmed.  “Don’t you want to be free from me?  Isn’t that why you searched for my heart?  So you could kill me?”

            Kagura tensed as Naraku cut to the metaphorical center of all her scheming against him.  With his possession of her heart and her disloyalty to him fully exposed, she was completely at his mercy.  “If…if that’s what you think…why set me free?”

            Inside his barrier, Naraku extended a hand toward Kagura and turned his palm upward, splaying his fingers out for her to see.  ‘ _My heart!’_ Kagura screamed mentally, watching her dark master’s hand in total captivation as her heart materialized within it, beating rapidly, visibly, and _audibly_.  The sound of her own heartbeat dominated Kagura’s mind: _ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump._   Very real demon blood pumped through its pulsing chambers, its aorta, vena cava, and assorted other disconnected blood vessels capped with tiny portals that received blood from and transported blood to Kagura’s body, as if it was housed inside her chest as normal. 

            As Kagura looked upon her heart, it began to beat faster and faster in Naraku’s hand, and the oni lord smoothed his fingertips over its smooth, lubricated surface, feeling the wind witch’s very life flowing through it.  “Your heart is so beautiful, Kagura,” Naraku praised with mounting, decidedly evil pleasure.  “I’m going to return it to you.”

            “ _What?_ ” Kagura asked in disbelief.

            Kagura’s heart began to really _pound_ in Naraku’s palm, matching its true owner’s rising emotions.  “Once I return this heart to your body, nothing will bind you to me any longer,” Naraku explained.  “You will be _free_.”

            In the same instant, Kagura saw her heart vanish from Naraku’s palm and felt it come back into existence… _inside_ her chest.  The first beat of it in its new home between her lungs stole her breath, a triumphant _ba-BUMP­_ that utterly rocked her world.  Reflexively, she clutched a hand to her breast, finally feeling the subtle, life-giving movements of the stolen organ she had sought to reclaim her entire life.  ‘ _My heart…I have my heart back!’_

Then, a blinding, ripping pain shattered Kagura’s brief euphoria as Naraku formed his right arm into a hydra-like set of three, fish-hooked tentacles, each like a living, undulating spear, and ran her through.  The three tentacles passed through his barrier unimpeded and leapt forward several feet to impale Kagura in three places, forming a lethal, blood-soaked triangle in her upper body.  Two of them punched their way through her ribcage, battering her ribs apart and skewering each of her lungs to explode out her back.  The third tentacle spear slipped _under_ her ribs and ripped through her liver, narrowly missing her spine on its way out her back.

            Naraku’s tentacles caught Kagura at the bottom of an exhale.  Her next breath in came as a strangled, drowning gurgle, and when she tried to breathe it back out, what had to be at least a cup of pure, oxygen-rich arterial blood came rushing up her throat and out her mouth.  “Don’t worry,” Naraku comforted to Kagura in the most cold-blooded manner.  “I avoided your precious heart.”

            “ _Wh-what_ ,” Kagura struggled, continuing to vomit blood.  “What _is_ this?”  The wind sorceress snapped her magic fan open and cast a desperate Dance of Blades at Naraku.  Her wind blades impacted harmlessly against his barrier, eliciting only a smile and a chuckle from him.  In return, he pumped distilled liquid miasma through his tentacles directly into her chest cavity, as if impregnating her body with the seed of her death.

            The miasma entered Kagura’s body with a ‘gush’ that she could both hear and _feel._ Naraku yanked his tentacles out of her chest and their long, tapered fish-hooks ripped her wounds open even more widely to maximize the damage done.  The wind witch’s red-and-white kimono began to turn all red by the sheer amount of blood flowing out of her, plumes of violet smoke pouring out of her wounds as the liquid miasma that Naraku injected into her began to consume her from the inside out.  Total agony consumed her and in her debilitated state, she lost control of both her magic feather and the winds it rode upon, the winds picking up and beginning to carry her away from Naraku.

            “Now _go,_ ” Naraku bid to Kagura, both aloud and directly into her mind for maximum psychological damage as she sailed away from him.  “Wherever you please.  And I hope you enjoy it…for the short time you have left.  Although I’m afraid all you’ll feel…is despair and pain.  And _that_ , Kagura, is the freedom you so desperately sought.”

~~~~

            “Hello, Kohaku,” Moryomaru addressed with undisguised pleasure.  “Thank you for coming.”

            Kohaku looked Moryomaru over, sizing him up.  The young taijiya didn’t have quite the same level of training and spiritual awareness that his sister did, but even he could feel the terrible aura flowing off of the demonic golem before him. ‘ _So this is Moryomaru…_ ’ he thought.  ‘ _Inside him is the Infant, Naraku’s heart!_ ’  He glanced over a shoulder at Sango, seeing that she was still unconscious from her collision with the hard ground.  ‘ _I have to get Moryomaru away from my sister!_ ’

            Kohaku began to spin the weighted end of his kusarigama’s chain in a hand, casting it forward so that it wrapped around the wrist of Moryomaru massive, hideous left arm.  Moryomaru only laughed.  “You plan to fight _me,_ with _those_ puny weapons?” the golem asked in rhetoric as he drew his chain-wrapped arm backward.

            By Moryomaru’s pull, the chain of Kohaku’s sickle weapon suddenly went taut and yanked Kohaku off his feet.  Kohaku fully expected this and with his Shikon-enhanced strength, he tugged on his chain to _accelerate_ toward Moryomaru.  He sailed through the air, angling his sickle to slash Moryomaru across his face, using one of the demon’s broad shoulders as a stepping stone to redirect his flight and land at Moryomaru’s back.  “I dare you, Moryomaru!” the taijiya taunted to Moryomaru and the Infant inside him.  “Just _try_ to take my Shikon shard!”

            Amused as the gash that Kohaku left in his face knit itself closed, Moryomaru turned ponderously to face Kohaku again and form one of his arms into a terrifying bouquet of gigantic, wriggling tentacles, brandishing them to the surprisingly-powerful taijiya before him.  “It’s so odd, Kohaku,” he noted with venomous thoughtfulness. “It’s odd that you, who are supposed to be Naraku’s little marionette, seem to be acting fully of your own will.”

            Indeed, Kohaku had once been under Naraku’s telepathic control, but he had broken free of it without the oni lord’s knowledge.  Since then, he pretended to still be Naraku’s puppet, using it as a ruse so as to be able to thwart his plans from the inside out.  Now, it appeared to him that his ruse had finally come undone.  Moryomaru lashed out with his tentacles and Kohaku leapt out of their way as they punched into the stone where he had been standing.  Kohaku began to run, keeping Moryomaru squarely in his view, and Moryomaru pursued.  “You will _not_ get away,” the Infant’s sentient armor sneered.

            Sango began to rouse from her fall-induced state of unconsciousness, finding herself laying with Kirara in a crater of shattered rock.  Kirara gave a weak yowl and reverted to her housecat form.  “What…?” Sango asked herself as she sighted Kirara next to her.  ‘ _That’s right…we were being chased by Moryomaru._ ’

            Then, Sango spotted Kohaku fighting with Moryomaru some yards away.  Moryomaru launched his tentacles at Kohaku along two different vectors, attacking from above and below.  Kohaku used his kusarigama to slice through the tentacles coming at him from above, but the ones coming at him from below were too fast for him.  One of them snagged one of his booted feet while another split into two halves and pinched onto his right forearm, the arm he used to wield his kusarigama.  Together, the tentacles lifted Kohaku off his feet and brought him to Moryomaru so that they were face-to-face.

            One of the Infant’s child-like arms sprouted from the tentacle of Moryomaru’s that held Kohaku’s leg, its tiny palm pressing to Kohaku’s slim, toned thigh.  Even though Kohaku’s body was mostly sheathed inside a form-fitting bodysuit like Sango’s, the closeness of the young male taijiya’s flesh to the Infant’s hand allowed Moryomaru and the Infant to read his thoughts, as they had done with Kagura.  “I see it clearly now, Kohaku,” Moryomaru said.  “Your memory has returned.”

            The Infant’s fingers squeezed Kohaku’s thigh in a disturbing, lecherous manner as Moryomaru probed deeper into Kohaku’s mind.  “I can _read_ it, you know.  Your _soul_ ,” the demonic golem boasted, an evil smile spreading over his oversized, yet handsome face.  “You’ve been prepared to throw your life away from the start.  Oppressed by guilt for killing your father and fellow villagers, you thought you would atone for them with your own death.  Very nice.”

            Moryomaru spoke of the way Naraku used Kohaku to kill the clan of professional demon hunters that Kohaku and Sango belonged to.  Kohaku and Sango’s father had been the leader of that clan and Naraku, posing as the son of a human daimyo, lured him, Kohaku, Sango, and rest of the clan to the daimyo’s castle, where Naraku possessed Kohaku and used him to kill his fellow taijiya.  While Kohaku knew that Naraku had been controlling him, he felt guilt nonetheless and right then, Moryomaru savored every bit of that guilt for himself.

            “Kohaku!” Sango cried out to her brother as she ran toward him and Moryomaru, clutching an unconscious Kirara to her chest.  Both Kohaku and Moryomaru heard her cry but Moryomaru seemed unconcerned, hardly perceiving Sango as a threat.  “You should die for your sister, too,” Moryomaru suggested to Kohaku with insidious pleasure.  “You know she will never forget that her own brother murdered their father.  So long as you remain alive, her pain will never cease.”

            Sango called out again and Kohaku glanced at her as she approached in the distance.  “ _No!_ ” he shouted to his sister.  “Don’t come closer!”  Sango stopped as he instructed and Kohaku glared up at Moryomaru, sneering viciously at him.  “I will not die in vain!”

            Moryomaru’s tentacles held only one of Kohaku’s arms, the one he used to hold the sickle end of his kusarigama.  Swiftly, Kohaku reached over to his trapped arm with his free one and took his sickle into his free hand, casting it forward to decapitate Moryomaru in one, clean swipe.  A feeling of triumph overcame Kohaku as his sickle hit its mark, but that triumph was dashed immediately as Moryomaru’s severed, floating head laughed at him.  “Feel better?” Moryomaru asked of Kohaku as his head reconnected to his body.

            Another of Moryomaru’s tentacles slithered its way up Kohaku’s back and the tip of it pressed to the base of his neck, the place where Naraku had implanted the shard of the Shikon no Tama that sustained his life.  Kohaku’s body stiffened involuntarily, a pulse of terrible pain ripping through him as Moryomaru disturbed his shard.  Sango saw this and began to run forward again to intervene when suddenly, InuYasha dropped in on Moryomaru and Kohaku from above, using Tetsuseiga to cleave through Moryomaru’s hideous tentacles and cut Kohaku free.

            “InuYasha,” Moryomaru greeted as the hanyou warrior placed himself directly between him and Kohaku.  Moryomaru backed away from InuYasha and Kohaku slightly, for whereas the demonic golem could ignore Sango, he could not ignore Sesshomaru’s half-brother or the powerful sword he carried.

            While InuYasha distracted Moryomaru, Sango rushed in to take Kohaku into her arms, tearing Moryomaru’s severed tentacles away from him.  Kohaku gave up a weak groan as Sango removed the tentacle that had sought to remove his Shikon shard and Sango felt relief overcome her by the knowledge that he still lived.

            Kagome, Miroku, and Shippo arrived on the scene shortly behind InuYasha.  InuYasha had let Kagome off of his back some distance before so that he could move against Moryomaru without fear of exposing her to danger, and so Kagome moved on foot, miko bow and magic arrows drawn.  Along the way, they had found Sango’s Hiraikotsu laying on the mountain valley floor and Miroku carried it slung over a shoulder.  Though the houshi wanted to return Sango’s weapon to her, a much more immediate thought was her safety after her encounter with Moryomaru.  “Sango!  You’re unhurt!” he shouted to her, relieved to see that Moryomaru hadn’t done any serious damage.

            InuYasha shouted over a shoulder at his friends as they moved to come to Sango’s aid.  “Stay back, all of you!”  The hanyou warrior didn’t want any of them getting too close to Moryomaru for any reason, and he clenched his hands on Tetsuseiga’s hilt to square off with the demonic golem.  “Moryomaru, or rather…Naraku’s Infant!”

            “So, Kagura’s been talking, eh?” Moryomaru thought aloud.  InuYasha and his friends now knew his true nature, which put him in a dangerous position.

            “Now that I know what you really are, I can’t leave you alive!” InuYasha growled.  “Prepare yourself!  _Kongosoha!”_

InuYasha slashed Tetsuseiga through the air and unleashed his Diamond Spear Blast directly at Moryomaru at close range.  Despite the close range, Moryomaru’s speed and ability to fly allowed him to leap out of the way and take to the sky.  “Trying to run away?” InuYasha taunted to Moryomaru and the Infant within him.

            “Oh, I’ll be back, eventually,” Moryomaru promised to InuYasha in retort.  “When I return, I’ll devour your blade’s demon power!”

            Moryomaru then turned mid-air and flapped his giant bat-wings to leave InuYasha and his friends far behind.  “He _ran off?_ ” Kagome asked in disbelief.

            “Why?” Shippo added as he clung to Miroku’s shoulder.  “I thought he could, you know, absorb his opponent’s power.  Why would he run away without fighting?”

            Miroku squinted as Moryomaru’s giant form grew smaller and smaller in the distance, eventually disappearing completely.  “Perhaps he still lacks the strength to absorb the power of InuYasha’s Diamond Spears,” he suggested.

            “You’re probably right,” Kagome agreed.  “Which is why he was trying to take Kohaku’s Shikon shard.  To increase his strength.”

            Kohaku stirred in Sango’s arms, opening his eyes to see misty sky above him.  He jolted awake and tore himself away from Sango, leaping back away from her as if to escape her.  “Wait!” Sango called.  “Don’t go, Kohaku!  You…remember everything, don’t you?”

            InuYasha, Kagome, Miroku, and Shippo gathered around Sango and Kohaku, immediately grasping the significance of Sango’s claim.  Kohaku had regained his memory, which meant he remembered all of the terrible things Naraku had made him do and at the same time, he was finally free from the evil oni’s control.

            “Just now, you were trying to protect me from Moryomaru,” Sango said to Kohaku.

            Kohaku swallowed thickly, casting his eyes downward to the ground to escape Sango’s gaze.  “Sango…Sister,” he said.

            “ _Kohaku!_ ” Sango burst.  Kohaku _recognized_ her.  She rushed forward and gripped Kohaku by his upper arms, looking him in his eyes to make sure that what she saw there was, in fact, the brother that Naraku had estranged her from.  “You know who I am!  You _remember!_ ”

            Kagome sidled up to InuYasha, grasping one of the sleeves of his red Fire-Rat haori as she watched the exchange between Sango and Kohaku unfold.  “Then…Naraku’s spell _did_ wear off…”        she said.

            “I remember,” Kohaku confirmed grimly to Sango.  “I remember everything.  Even that day…”  Bloody images of his kusarigama slicing through the necks of his friends, family, and _father_ , taking their heads clean off, flashed through Kohaku’s mind, turning his stomach.  “That’s why I can’t stay with you, Sango.”

            “Oh, Kohaku…” Kagome tried to comfort to Kohaku, but another voice echoed in Kohaku’s mind with more authority: Moryomaru’s.  The Infant’s armor said of Sango:  _“She will never forget that her little brother murdered their father.”_

            “But you just got back together!” Shippo interjected from Miroku’s shoulder while Miroku himself remained silent.

            “What are you planning to do?” Sango asked to Kohaku.

            “Naraku still hasn’t realized that I’ve regained my memory,” Kohaku explained.

            “No!  You can’t fight him alone!” Sango snapped, knowing full well that for Kohaku to try and kill Naraku entirely on his own was basically suicide.

            “But…!” Kohaku attempted to speak further, but Kagome interrupted him. “Will you abandon your sister?” she asked, stepping up to stand before him, next to Sango.  “She needs you, Kohaku.  No one can take your place.”

            Kohaku shifted uncomfortably as Kagome spoke pure truth.  Sardonically, Shippo noted of Kagome’s words to Kohaku, speaking to Miroku: “I guess that includes _you_ , monk.”

            Miroku closed his eyes and shoved his hands into his sleeves as if to meditate.  “Hey.  No one can take _my_ place either.”

            Then, InuYasha’s furry dog ears and sensitive nose twitched.  “Can you guys wrap it up?” he asked bluntly as he stood nearby.

            “InuYasha?” Kagome might have scolded her hanyou love, but the look on his face caused her to immediately think otherwise.

            “There’s a bad wind rising,” InuYasha continued, listening to the sound of the wind flowing over the mountain he and his friends stood on.  It carried a scent with it, one that caused him great concern.  “This scent, it’s faint, but I smell Naraku’s miasma…and Kagura’s blood.”

            Everyone present knew exactly what the scent of Kagura’s blood implied.  “We’ve got to go to her!” Kagome said.

            “Yeah,” InuYasha agreed.  “I’m not crazy about that woman, but this time…”

            “If Naraku’s discovered her betrayal, she’s in danger!” Miroku concluded.

            Having recovered enough from her fight with Moryomaru to fly, Kirara leapt down from Sango’s arms and transformed into her battle cat form, inviting Sango and Miroku to climb on.  “What about me?” Kohaku asked as they and the others made ready to depart for Kagura’s location.

            “Yes!” Kagome said, agreeing whole-heartedly with the idea of allowing Kohaku to travel with her and her friends.  InuYasha voiced similar sentiment.  “Hell yeah!  Come on!”

~~~~

             Mortally wounded, Kagura flew slowly, aimlessly upon her feather, unable to control it except to somewhat guide its descent.  She lost altitude gradually until she landed in a vast meadow of wildflowers, her feather plowing many of them over as it skidded to a halt.  With great strain, she rose to her feet and stumbled out of her feather’s boat-like structure, clutching her hands to her wounds to try and limit the blood loss.  Vision blurring in and out, she managed only a few steps before she collapsed to her knees, thick violet smoke pouring out of the holes in her back as Naraku’s miasma ate her alive.

            InuYasha and his pack made their way to Kagura as fast as possible, with InuYasha carrying Kagome while Miroku, Sango, Kohaku, and Shippo all rode Kirara.  For his own part, Kohaku thought of how Kagura saved him from Hakudoshi.  _“Run, Kohaku!”_ she had ordered to him, sending him flying off on one of her magic feathers.  He knew that had Kagura not been there, he would have been easy prey for Hakudoshi.  ‘ _Because of me, Kagura is…she’s…_ ’

            Sango and Kagome held Kagura in their thoughts, as well.  ‘ _So we were right.  Kagura *did* save Kohaku‘s life back there!’_ Sango thought to herself.  Similarly, Kagome thought: ‘ _I should have stopped her more forcibly.  I shouldn’t have left her alone!”_

InuYasha clenched his teeth as he ran faster and faster, so fast that Kirara had trouble keeping up by her passenger load.  ‘ _Damn it,_ ’ he thought of Kagura helplessly, imagining what kind of miserable death Naraku was putting her to at that very moment.  ‘ _Kagura, don’t you *dare* die!’_

            As her death approached, Kagura took some small comfort in the sound of her own heartbeat.  _Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump_ was all she could hear, most all other sounds drowned out for her by the pain wracking her.  She still managed to form lucid thoughts, thinking: ‘ _It’s beating, my heart…_ ’  She looked up to the tops of the trees before her, seeing a flock of birds taking flight from their branches and imagining herself as one of them.  ‘ _Where should I go?  I can go anywhere.  I’m *free!*’_

            Kagura tried to stand once more, but her body refused to obey her.  ‘ _I…can’t move,_ ’ she realized, clutching at a handful of grass.  The plumes of miasma coming out of her back grew in size and density as Naraku’s poison ate away at her insides faster and faster.  Even as her insides turned to useless mush, she stayed incredibly calm, if morose.  She looked down at her lap, watching her blood leak out from her chest and drip onto her thighs.  ‘ _It’s so quiet.  There’s no one else here.  I guess this is where it’s going to end…all alone.  This is…the freedom I sought_.’

            Then, the sound of wildflowers compressing softly between two heavy, booted feet caught Kagura’s attention.  She looked up to see none other than Sesshomaru standing just a few feet before her.  Her ruby eyes widened and she spoke the daiyoukai’s name in a breathless hush, her voice strained by her punctured lungs.  “ _Sessho…maru!_ ”

            Sesshomaru looked upon Kagura with sympathy plainly visible in his gorgeous golden eyes, even if he didn’t speak such sympathy right away.  “I was following the scent of Naraku’s miasma,” he said.

            Kagura gave a weak smile and a laugh that came as little more than a simple exhalation.  She looked back down at the flower-covered ground, feeling her consciousness beginning to wane, as if she was about to fall asleep.  “Disappointed?  That it was…just _me?_ ” she asked.

            “I knew it was you.”

            Kagura jolted back awake.  She looked up at Sesshomaru again, seeing the unflappable stoicism on his face, and knew that he meant what he said.  “You knew…and still you came.”

            Sesshomaru reached across his armored waist and took Tenseiga in hand.  Kagura watched him with undivided attention, knowing what the sword that he had received from his father was potentially capable of.  A few moments passed and Sesshomaru did not feel Tenseiga respond to him.  No servants of the underworld appeared before him.  Evidently, the so-called ‘healing sword’ either would not or _could_ _not_ save Kagura.  Dropping his hand to his side again, Sesshomaru felt Kagura’s spirit sink back down, able to do nothing but watch as her body dissolved into the wind.  “Is this it, then?” he asked softly to her, to try and comfort her in some small way.

            “Yes, but…it’s all right now,” Kagura answered.  Her heart gave its last few beats and stopped as Naraku’s miasma consumed it.  “I was able to see you, one last time.”

            Kagura closed her eyes and breathed outward in a sigh, leaning backward as death took her at last.  Her body and even her clothes turned to mist to flow away on the wind she so loved.  InuYasha and his pack arrived just in time to witness her last moments, watching as one of her magic feathers slipped out of her hair and rose into the sky.  A sudden gust of wind rushed past them and Sesshomaru at once, a farewell.  ‘ _Wind_ …’ Kagome pondered.  Was Kagura _free_ at last?

            The others lamented on arriving too late.  Kohaku grappled with how Kagura had basically exchanged her own life for his.  For InuYasha, Kagura was yet another woman he failed to protect from Naraku.  Naraku had won _again_.  Sesshomaru began to walk away without so much as acknowledging the presence of InuYasha or his pack and InuYasha called after him.  “Hold it, Sesshomaru!”

            Kagome grasped one of InuYasha’s arms with both hands, hoping that InuYasha wasn’t about to start a fight.  To her relief, he made no move to draw Tetsuseiga.  “Tell me, Sesshomaru,” InuYasha continued, more softly this time.  “Did she suffer?”

            Sesshomaru stopped briefly and turned to regard InuYasha with his peripheral vision, answering enigmatically.  “She was… _smiling_.”

            _I am the Wind.  Free to fly wherever I wish._

            Or so Kagura thought.

 

**-To be continued-**


	13. Resurrection of the Wind - pt. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April, 1556: Kagura awakens in a new body made for her by Naraku, finding herself thrust right back into the nightmare she thought death had freed her from.  Pairings: Naraku/Kagura/Byakuya, Naraku/Byakuya/Kagura.

 

**(Continued from pt. 3)**

            Kagura closed her eyes and breathed outward in a relieved sigh, leaning backward as death took her at last.  Her body and even her clothes turned to mist to flow away on the wind she so loved.  InuYasha and his pack arrived just in time to witness her last moments, watching as one of her magic feathers slipped out of her hair and rose into the sky.  A sudden gust of wind rushed past them and Sesshomaru at once, a farewell.  ‘ _Wind_ …’ Kagome pondered.  Was Kagura free at last?

            The others lamented on arriving too late.  Kohaku grappled with how Kagura had basically exchanged her own life for his.  For InuYasha, Kagura was yet another woman he failed to protect from Naraku.  Naraku had won _again_.  Sesshomaru began to walk away without so much as acknowledging the presence of InuYasha or his pack and InuYasha called after him.  “Hold it, Sesshomaru!”

            Kagome grasped one of InuYasha’s arms with both hands, hoping that InuYasha wasn’t about to start a fight.  To her relief, he made no move to draw Tetsuseiga.  “Tell me, Sesshomaru,” InuYasha continued, more softly this time.  “Did she suffer?”

            Sesshomaru stopped briefly and turned to regard InuYasha with his peripheral vision, answering enigmatically:  “She was… _smiling_.”

            _I am the Wind.  Free to fly wherever I wish._

            Or so Kagura thought.

~~~~

_April, 1556_

            As Kagura left the land of living, nearly seven years passed in an instant for her, seven years spent not as the free Wind, but seven years spent trapped inside an intangible darkness.  That darkness was Naraku’s spirit.  As Naraku detached her soul from his and implanted it in her new body, she closed her eyes in one life to open them again in another, finding herself looking up not at Sesshomaru or InuYasha, but none other than Naraku himself.

            Naraku smiled with evil pleasure, his red eyes seeming to light up as Kagura came awake in his arms.  “My lovely Kagura.  Welcome home,” he bid to the awoken wind sorceress, cradling her carefully in his lap.

**(Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – Dreamlore Degenerate)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOn4zKOsJv0** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOn4zKOsJv0)

            Kagura blinked a few times, laying utterly still as Naraku held her.  The last few blood-soaked moments of her previous life played over and over in her mind and soon, her ruby eyes glowed with a swell of horror and rage, her glossy red lips warping into a terrible, bare-toothed sneer.  ‘ _No…no, no, **NO!** ’_  This was all Kagura could think as she jerked suddenly in Naraku’s hold, throwing him and Byakuya off her with incredible ease by her new body’s enhanced strength. 

            She didn’t stop there.  Out of sheer instinct, Kagura took to her feet, then ducked low and tackled Naraku’s 250-pound frame to the curved floor of the spherical underground chamber she suddenly found herself in.  She seized her opportunity to attack before he could raise a protective barrier.  Unashamed or perhaps just unaware of her own nudity, she crouched low over his armored chest with open thighs, gripped his throat with one hand, and clenched the other into a hard fist to begin pounding his face in.

            Righting himself after Kagura threw him aside, Byakuya watched Kagura start turning Naraku’s face into bloody pulp and debated with himself over whether or not to intervene.  On one hand, Kagura was _powerful._ Given that she was completely naked atop Naraku, Byakuya could see her strong, yet graceful female musculature flexing underneath her creamy white skin with each blow she delivered to Naraku’s head.  When she woke up, she threw both of them off of her as if their bodies were made of straw, and Byakuya knew that if he tried to pull Kagura off Naraku, he would be in for the fight of his life if she decided to attack him instead.

            On the other hand, Byakuya knew that his life and Kagura’s were bound to Naraku’s.  If Kagura actually managed to kill Naraku in this moment, they were _all_ dead.  And then there was the matter of Sayaka.  The shrine maiden and moonlight prostitute was asleep in the castle above them, recovering from the stress of being raped in her own bath house by himself and Naraku, followed by a relatively more consensual encounter with him in the castle’s bath.  The castle itself was built using Naraku’s magic and if Naraku were to die suddenly, Byakuya couldn’t predict what might happen to the castle’s structure.  At worst, the castle and even the landmass it sat upon would collapse into the sea, burying Sayaka alive.  Even if she could escape the rubble, she’d still have thirty miles of open water to swim across, assuming she could orient herself toward land.

            In Byakuya’s mind, the importance of Sayaka’s safety far outweighed his own, so he strode forward and grabbed Kagura’s wrist, halting her fist midair with great effort.  “Kagura, stop,” he ordered, just barely able to restrain her.  “Stop, _please!_   You’ll kill us _all!_ ”

            Kagura turned her head to look over her shoulder and glare up at Byakuya.  Still consumed by rage and adrenaline, she jerked her wrist from him, then used that same hand to seize the collar of his haori.  She dragged him down and drove her forehead firmly against his in a vicious head-butt, sending him hurtling backward.

            Byakuya cried out in pain as Kagura’s head met his.  God, her skull was like _steel!_   He toppled backward to land in nearly the same place that she had thrown him before, his ears ringing and vision blurred.  He shook his head to clear his senses somewhat and made ready to throw himself at Kagura much more violently when Naraku’s voice entered his mind.

 _“Wait_. _Kagura is much too strong for you,”_ Naraku spoke telepathically to Byakuya, excluding Kagura from mental transmission.  _“Let her have her fun.”_

 _“But, she’ll kill you.  And indirectly, herself, me, and Sayaka!”_ Byakuya decried to Naraku, also by telepathy.

            _“If mere fists could kill me, even Kagura’s, we would not be here today,”_ Naraku assured.  _“Let this happen.  It’s been a long time coming.”_

            Having rid herself of Byakuya for the moment, Kagura returned her attention to Naraku.  He made no move to escape and even though his face was now covered in bruises, blood streaming from his nose, he smiled up at her to goad her on.  “Piece of _shit,_ ” she cursed to him, the first intelligible words of her second life being ones of abject hatred.  She raised her fist again.  “Fuck you!”

            Kagura used her fist as a knuckled hammer, wild-eyed and snarling with each blow she delivered upon Naraku’s face.  Those snarls of hers soon came with a sickening _crunch_ each time as Naraku’s facial bones began to buckle into his head.  His entire skull fractured underneath Kagura’s fist and vile black blood poured freely out of the spongy, ink-black mass that was his demonic brain, soaking into his ebony mane and streaming along the underground chamber’s curved floor. 

            Naraku’s body went slack with apparent death and after giving his face one final smash, Kagura threw herself up onto her feet, backing away from him.  She breathed hard, her big breasts heaving with each breath she took, and her heart pounded as she realized where she was, what she had just done.  The hand she used to bash in Naraku’s face began to hurt terribly, throbbing with pain as she had nearly worn her durable wind demon knuckles down to bare, white bone. 

            Behind Kagura, Byakuya remained completely still and silent so as not to startle her and perhaps provoke her to attack him, watching Naraku’s body intently.  Outward, his dark master seemed to be dead, his only movements being the involuntary twitching of a practically-decapitated nervous system.  Of course, Byakuya knew that if he and Kagura were still alive, then so was Naraku; the oni lord was feigning death, probably to toy with Kagura, lull her into a false sense of security.  Byakuya then looked to Kagura, realizing that she was still quite naked from her birthing.  From his position at her back, he had a great view of her body’s entire rear aspect. 

            Happy to forget about Naraku for a moment, Byakuya couldn’t help but start at Kagura’s feet and work his eyes up her shapely legs, his pulse quickening with each additional inch of her creamy white flesh his eyes drank in.  From his perspective, Kagura’s long, toned, muscular calves thickened into a set of very powerful and beautiful thighs, then narrowed back up to converge into quite possibly the single greatest ass he had ever seen on a woman.  A few times, Naraku had him spy on InuYasha and his pack while they bathed, and with his flying eyeball drone, he was able to get good, long looks at the attractive rear ends of Kagome, Sango, Shizu, and Shiori all at once.  Kagura’s put even theirs to shame.  He wondered: even though he had fucked Sayaka twice, he hadn’t yet taken a good look at her rear.  How would it compare to that of the Wind Sorceress?

            Byakuya’s eyes ventured upward from Kagura’s delectable female posterior to focus on the spider-shaped brand that covered most of her bare back.  It was just like his own.  It was partially obscured by the tresses of her long, glossy-black hair, but it still clearly identified her as an incarnation of Naraku.  That effectively made her his sister.

            Breathing more calmly now after beating Naraku into a pulp, Kagura turned her head to glance over a bare shoulder at Byakuya.  “Who are _you?_ ” she asked.

            Byakuya’s elegant brows raised at the sound of Kagura’s voice.  It was smooth and sultry, almost like a purr.  Sexy and lethal at once.  Not only did she have great physical beauty, she had a sound to match.  “I am Byakuya, your successor,” Byakuya answered without delay.  “I guess…you could call me your _brother_.”

            Kagura turned to face Byakuya directly and the male wind demon’s view of her delicious backside turned to a view of her full, voluptuous breasts, her flat, toned stomach, and the perfectly-hairless bulge of her woman’s mound.  Byakuya felt himself blushing by Kagura’s unclothed beauty and, still kneeling, he turned his gaze to the floor to collect her clothes from the place where he had laid them out.  Still looking squarely at the floor so as not to stare at Kagura’s luscious body any further, he held her skimpy green yukata out for her to take it from him.  Kagura realized her own nakedness with a gasp and snatched her yukata out of Byakuya’s hands immediately, slipping her arms through its loose sleeves and tying it closed to cover herself up.

            “Brother, huh?” Kagura asked to Byakuya with venomous skepticism as she next took her blue intermediate kimono from him and clad herself in it.  She did the same with her outer, red-and-white kimono, fully dressed at last.  She then reached down to seize her ‘brother’ by the collar of his kimono again, pulling him up off of his knees and brandishing to him the fist that she had just used to cave in Naraku’s head.  “That doesn’t mean a thing to me.  Except for one, all my brothers and sisters have been mindless monsters or fucking psychopaths.  Which kind are _you?_ ”

            Between Naraku, Sayaka, and now Kagura, Byakuya had been getting pushed around or threatened quite a bit lately and right then, he felt that he’d had enough.  His face contorted into a sneer as bitterly beautiful as any of Kagura’s and he slapped her hand off of his collar, shooting to his feet to stand toe-to-toe, face-to-face with her.  He found that they stood at the same height, 6 ½ feet versus another 6 ½ feet.  Their faces and their bodies were as male/female reflections of each other, as if some kind of strange, gender-bending mirror stood between them.  “Which kind am _I?_ ” Byakuya seethed to Kagura’s face, staring her right in her gorgeous ruby eyes.  “You tell me.  I essentially _am_ you.”

            With muted anger, Byakuya shoved Kagura away from him to put some space between them, stunning the wind sorceress for a moment.  Still high on adrenaline from waking up in Naraku’s arms then immediately beating him to death, Kagura redirected some of that adrenaline into another bout of intense, uniquely female aggression.  She pounced on Byakuya with lethal grace, maneuvering within the confines of her silk kimono as if it was a second skin.  She took her wind demon brother down to the stone floor hard, as she had just done with Naraku.  Looming over him, she clamped her left hand around his neck, feeling his life beating beneath her thumb and relishing in the euphoria of her own strength.

            “This new body of mine is so _strong_ ,” Kagura said to Byakuya, pressing her thumb further into his carotid artery, threatening to sever it.  “I could tear your fucking throat out.  What was Naraku thinking, giving me this _weapon_ of a body?”

            Focusing on Kagura and the murderous expression on her lovely face, Byakuya spotted movement with his peripheral vision.  Behind Kagura, Naraku’s body lifted off the floor in total silence, levitated by an undetectable field of his youki.  His head still crushed in and bleeding heavily by Kagura’s vicious beating, the still-living oni lord used his youki to set himself upright in standing position, dozens of long, thin, prehensile tentacles sprouting from his back and descending to the floor as wriggling, glossy black snakes.

            Byakuya looked directly at Naraku, then back to Kagura.  His cobalt blue eyes narrowed.  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

            Kagura saw Byakuya glance at something behind her and she turned just in time to see Naraku’s tentacles shoot forward through the air and wrap around her.  She shrieked as they seized her by her ankles, knees, waist, and wrists to yank her right off Byakuya and drag her before her dark creator.  They lifted her off the stone floor and turned her midair to bring her face-to-face with him, her face mere inches from what remained of his.

            To Kagura’s revulsion, the ink-black blood that flowed from Naraku’s fractured skull and face suddenly stopped flowing, behaving like rapidly-congealing wax for a moment.  It then _reversed_ its flow, running back up into his head and even desaturating from the lilac kimono he wore beneath his armor.  His skull mended and his facial bones reconstructed until his face was whole once more, not a single drop of blood, bruise, or scar marring it.

            His face completely repaired, Naraku flashed Kagura an evil smile.  “It’s been a long time, Kagura,” he said, relishing in the mixture of emotions playing across the wind witch’s attractive features and burning in her ruby eyes.  “Believe it or not, I missed you.”

            “Let go of me!  _Let go!_ ” Kagura cursed and fought with all her might to break free from Naraku’s tentacles, but each one was as a length of flexible steel.  Despite her new body’s great strength, they refused to yield.  Another tentacle grew out of Naraku’s back and slithered down between his booted feet, along the stone floor, then up Kagura’s back to wrap around her neck from behind, tightening as a warm, living tourniquet.  It squeezed until Naraku could feel Kagura’s pulse through it, threatening to end her second life as soon as it began by the chilling intimacy of a slow, torturous strangulation.

            Images of the life draining from Kagura’s eyes flashed through Naraku’s mind, their perverse sexuality causing his cock to begin swelling up underneath his silk-lined armor.  “Be calm, Kagura,” Naraku hushed to his female incarnation.  “I can’t let you go.  Not even your death can take you from me.  You and I are bound, _forever_.”

            ‘ _Then, what Naraku said to me that day…was a lie,_ ’ Kagura thought bitterly, recalling what Naraku told her just before he killed her, seven years earlier.  _“Once I return this heart to your body, nothing will bind you to me any longer.  You will be free.”_   Evidently, nothing could free her from Naraku, not the return of her heart, not even her _death_.  Her body and soul would be his plaything in one way or another for as long as he lived.

            Naraku raised a hand between himself and Kagura and turned his palm upward, summoning the Shikon no Tama into it.  The jewel began to glow an ethereal, ominous magenta, illuminating their faces in dramatic fashion.  Kagura’s eyes widened, the light of the jewel reflected in each of them as she realized what was about to happen.  “No…” she whispered, her heart beginning to race in her chest.  “ _Please, don’t!”_

            “The arrangement between us is the same as ever,” Naraku said coldly to Kagura, closing his fingers over the Shikon jewel for her to see.  “Let me remind you of your place in it.”

            Naraku began to apply pressure to the jewel and Kagura’s breath seized in her lungs as what felt to her like an invisible hand reached into her chest, slipping past skin, muscle, and bone to take hold of her heart and _squeeze_.  Instantly, she became acutely aware of her own heartbeat, feeling and _hearing_ her heart straining to beat properly.  _Ba-bump.  Ba-bump.  Ba…bump.  Ba………bump._

            Her eyes opening wide and pupils dilating, Kagura opened her mouth as if to cry out, but no sound left her lips, the blood vessels in her neck straining as her heart struggled to beat.  Naraku smiled darkly, ratcheting up the crushing pressure on her heart until she began to thrash wildly in his tentacles’ hold, screaming silently as if in the throes of her second death, making a renewed and thoroughly desperate attempt to escape him.

            Watching all the while, Byakuya winced at the unfettered agony he knew Kagura must have been feeling at that moment.  Even though she may have come close to casually killing him just a minute or so earlier, he felt a strange affinity for her.  After all, they were essentially the same person, two sides of the same walking, talking coin.  The male wind demon hurried to his female reflection’s side, ducking and weaving through the tangle of Naraku’s demonic tentacles holding her.  Once past them, he slipped an arm between her and Naraku as if to try and separate them.

            “Enough, Naraku,” Byakuya said to Naraku on Kagura’s behalf.  “Enough!  You’re _killing her!”_

            Naraku saw Kagura’s wild, pain-filled eyes dart to the side of her Byakuya stood on.  In those gorgeous female pools of blood-red color, a flicker of hope dawned there for him to see, hope that Byakuya’s unexpected advocacy might prevent him from taking her heart from ‘mere’ fibrillation to full cardiac arrest or even outright rupture.  Feeling charitable, Naraku released his Shikon-fueled grip on Kagura’s heart as both she and Byakuya desired, causing the restrained wind sorceress to let her head fall forward, tucking her chin to her chest as she drew a series of harsh, gasping breaths.  They were breaths of utter relief.

            Naraku reabsorbed the Shikon no Tama into his hand and reached down to grasp Kagura’s chin, lifting her head to turn her face up to him.  Her ruby eyes downcast and filled with tears, she turned her eyes upward to glare at him with unveiled hatred, her chest heaving as she caught her breath.  He looked upon her with visible enjoyment; to him, she was most beautiful when intensely negative emotions, such as rage, hate, and fear, played across her face.

            “My, if your looks could kill…” Naraku chuckled to Kagura.  “Remember, though – mine _can_.”  Abruptly, he released the sexy wind witch from his tentacles’ hold.  Still weak from his attack on her heart, she landed on her bare feet, then sank to her knees on the stone floor before him, kept from collapsing outright by Byakuya’s support.

            Kagura was certain that she could taste blood creeping its way up her throat and she swallowed thickly to force it back down.  She shrugged Byakuya away from her and the male wind demon backed up to give her some space to breathe.  “Why are you _doing_ this to me, Naraku?” she demanded of her evil creator with pained exasperation.  “What do you _want!_?”

            Naraku’s characteristically perverse smile faded, the white pupils at the center of his eyes’ red irises glowing with a malevolent energy that bordered on madness.  “I want your obedience.  Your _loyalty_ , _”_ he replied with steely intensity.  “Of all my incarnations before Byakuya, you were always my favorite.  Despite your rebellious nature and your constant scheming against me, you were also the most _useful_.  But now, there is very little room for your indiscretions.”

            “And why’s that?” Kagura glowered.

            Here, Naraku made certain not to mention to Kagura the illness that the Shikon jewel had sewn in him.  So far, only Byakuya and Sayaka knew of it and he preferred to keep it that way for as long as possible.  He could confine Sayaka to the island castle, isolate her within it, and he could telepathically monitor Byakuya’s thoughts at all times, so as to censor the wind demon if he ever got close to divulging his secret.  That aside, what he did say to Kagura was true enough. 

            “The conflict over the Shikon no Tama nears its end,” Naraku explained.  “The jewel is almost complete.  Only a few shards remain out of my possession.  I am on the verge of becoming a _god_.”

            “Oh, _great_ ,” Kagura congratulated with heavy sarcasm.  “What do you need _me_ for?”

            “The time has come to bring all of my enemies to their knees,” Naraku said.  “InuYasha, Sesshomaru, Koga, all of their friends.  And finally, _Kikyo_.  You will go with Byakuya and capture her, then bring her to me.”

            “Kikyo, huh?” Kagura pondered.  Not knowing about Naraku’s illness and his need for a miko’s reiki to fight it, she ascribed his desire to have Kikyo brought to him to whatever remained of the human bandit Onigumo in his twisted mind.  “What makes you think I’ll lift a _finger_ for you?”

            Naraku smiled down at his lovely wind sorceress.  “Currently, Kikyo travels with _Kohaku_ ,” he said, intoning the name of Sango’s younger brother.

            Kagura stilled, her ruby eyes widening.  ‘ _Kohaku is alive!’_ she realized, the thought coming as a silent, mental cry of surprise and jubilation.  She didn’t yet know how long she’d been dead, but still, she took great comfort in the knowledge that saving Kohaku from Hakudoshi _hadn’t_ been for nothing.

            “Yes, Kagura,” Naraku confirmed with pleasure dripping from his rich, evil voice.  He hardly needed to read Kagura’s thoughts to recognize the restrained joy in her eyes or the reason behind it.  “Kohaku yet lives.  Along with Kikyo, you and Byakuya will bring him to me, and when you do, I will extract the jewel shard keeping him alive.  Do this willingly, and I will extract the shard in such a way that he _survives_.”

            Kagura looked Naraku directly in his evil red eyes, searching for signs of deception.  For her, the prospect of finally freeing Kohaku from the specter of death that came with the removal of the Shikon shard in his back was too tempting to dismiss out of hand.  “How can I trust you in this?” she asked.  “How do I know that once you have Kohaku, you won’t just take his shard and let him die?”

            An expression of sinister thoughtfulness crossed Naraku’s face, one that shook Kagura to her core.  He looked to Byakuya, relishing in the male wind demon’s refined, masculine beauty.  “I learned something extraordinary recently,” he said to Kagura, still looking at Byakuya.  “Tonight, Byakuya here met a woman, a lovely miko named Sayaka.  Short, black hair, golden eyes, a nice ass, and even better breasts.  Byakuya and I found that not only did she have a good, tight cunt, she had a very hungry, fertile _womb_.  She carries his child, now.”

            Kagura’s elegant female brows furrowed and she glanced at Byakuya.  The handsome male wind demon averted his gaze from hers in embarrassment at Naraku’s casual description of what for him had been an incredibly personal and passionate experience.  Her heart began to beat a little faster as she began to connect the proverbial dots.  She looked back to Naraku.  “So?” she asked, breathing a little harder now.

            “Byakuya can create life with a woman,” Naraku stated.  “I intend to see if you can do the same…with _Kohaku_.  He’s not a boy anymore.  He’s become quite a fine, young man in your absence.”

            Kagura shot to her feet and leapt back away from Naraku.  He would have her conceive a _child?_   “You’re _insane_ ,” she rasped at her creator.  “You’re out of your fucking _mind!_ ”

            “Am I?” Naraku posed in gleeful rhetoric, advancing on Kagura with slow, measured, deeply threatening steps.  “This guarantees Kohaku’s safety, doesn’t it?  I’ll take his jewel shard without killing him, then he’ll be all yours.  It’ll be much more pleasurable for both you, me, and especially _him_ if his heart was to keep beating, so that when he takes you, you may feel it beating inside you through the beautiful pussy I’ve given you.”

            Once he was close enough to Kagura, Naraku used his demonic energy to abruptly shoot forward across the curved stone floor with blinding speed, slipping a powerful arm around the wind witch’s slim waist and pulling her tightly against his big, armored body.  At seven feet in height, he stood about six inches taller than her, and before she could react, he fisted his other hand in her long, glossy black hair to yank her head backward so that he could look deep into her gorgeous ruby eyes.

**(Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – Hedon)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kx1qiyK-Uo** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kx1qiyK-Uo)

            Naraku’s eyes glowed a radiant magenta with a surge of power from the Shikon no Tama within him and Kagura’s glowed to match as that power took control of her body.  She cried out wordlessly, her muscles paralyzed and preventing her from moving.  With Kagura immobilized, Naraku removed his arm from her waist, then moved that hand around to her front, working it down between their bodies to press it against her kimono-covered abdomen.

            “Just a second,” Naraku whispered hotly to one of Kagura’s delicate, tapered ears.  He rubbed his hand around her flat stomach, as if searching for something.  “It’s around here somewhere.  Ah, _there it is_ …”

            Naraku’s hand stilled directly over Kagura’s womb.  His evil demonic energy seeped out of his hand to osmose through the wind witch’s clothes and the skin and muscle beneath, flowing into her body’s most sacred chamber.  It throbbed potently in response, its living, reproductive walls coming awake for the first time.  The stream of youki split into two equal tendrils, one coursing into each of Kagura’s silky pink fallopian tubes and touching the pearly feminine jewels that lay at their ends: her _ovaries_.

            _Ba-bump_.  Kagura felt her entire body pulse with _something_ as Naraku manipulated the symmetrical twin hearts of her womanhood, the very sources of her fertility.  It was as a wave of heat that began deep in her belly and swept outward, up into her chest and head and down between her thighs.  Another pulse hit and she gave another gasping cry, her cry becoming a soft, sultry _moan_ as a host of unfamiliar sexual sensations assaulted her.  Naraku removed his hand from her stomach, releasing her from the Shikon jewel’s influence, and she stumbled back away from him.

            A wave of sudden dizziness overcame Kagura.  Her brain was swimming in a cocktail of demonic estrogen inside her head.  “What…what have you _done_ to me?” she gasped, clutching a hand to her heart as it sped up in her chest, her blood growing hotter in her veins.

            “I’ve just activated your ovaries,” Naraku grinned.  “You’re feeling their hormones beginning to flow for the first time in _either_ of your lives.”

            Kagura felt her knees go weak and she eased herself down to sit on the stone floor before she lost her balance outright.  From her perspective, the entire world was beginning to spin, her vision blurring in and out of focus.  “Make it stop.  _Please_ ,” she begged of Naraku.

            “I can’t, even if I wanted to,” Naraku lamented half-heartedly.  “Nature is taking its proper course at last.  It will not be denied.  And if I left your ovaries dormant, you wouldn’t be able to have children with Kohaku or _any_ man, would you?”

            Naraku approached Kagura again, more slowly and deliberately this time, so as to present himself as little less threatening.  Looming over her, he stooped down to grasp one of her upper arms and gently pull her back onto her feet, his face mere inches from hers.  She trembled in his hold, no longer having the strength to push him away or fight him off.  His evil red eyes softening somewhat, he closed the distance between them to brush his nose past hers and kiss her.

            The kiss was strangely chaste, yet fiercely passionate, and Kagura mewled helplessly into Naraku’s mouth.  After a few searing hot moments, the oni lord pulled away, leaving his wind witch breathless with rising desire.  “ _Kami_.  Your lips are like _silk_ ,” he praised to her.  “Kohaku is going to be _powerless_ against you.  I imagine that you’ll be able to strain even _Sesshomaru’s_ discipline, too.”

            Beside Naraku and Kagura, Byakuya felt that strain for himself as Kagura’s fresh, female demonic pheromones began to work their effect on him.  His cock began to fill out underneath his hakama, reaching its full length and girth very quickly.  Soon, he could feel its broad crown nudging, _weeping_ insistently against his lower abdomen.  Naraku could sense the male wind demon’s mounting arousal and smiled wickedly. 

            Naraku turned Kagura in place, pulling her back against his chest, and faced them toward Byakuya, as if to offer Kagura to him.  “Join us, Byakuya,” he ordered, inviting the male wind demon nearer with an extended hand.  “I know you want to.”

            Byakuya’s chest heaved by his quickening breathing, his desire building at the thought of feeling Kagura’s perfect body pressed up against his own.  He could hear the beat of her heart, see the ragged cadence of her breathing by the rise and fall of her ample chest, and he could see the raw, sexual desperation in her eyes.  He knew that she would offer no resistance if he moved on her, but the rational part of him protested.  “I…I want to be faithful to Sayaka,” he said, thinking of his relationship with the miko prostitute sleeping in the castle above.  If Sayaka was to be his wife, as Naraku had suggested earlier, then in order to be a somewhat proper husband, he felt that he should be physically committed to her alone.

            Naraku laughed aloud at Byakuya’s quaint notion of monogamy.  “ _Please._   Don’t think so rigidly!” he chastised playfully.  “Right now, InuYasha has _four_ women at his sexual beck and call, and they all _love_ him.  Sometimes, he does them all in one night.  And besides, is it really infidelity if you fuck _yourself?_ ”

            Naraku walked himself and Kagura forward across the stone floor to approach Byakuya, then pushed Kagura roughly into the male wind demon’s arms.  Byakuya caught her mid-stumble and held her carefully.  She felt so warm and solid against him, her curvy female body fitting well to his.  Her generous breasts felt especially delicious as they melded to his chest through their clothes.  He pushed her away slightly to look her in her eyes, fast losing the battle he waged with his own discipline.

            Kagura returned Byakuya’s cobalt gaze, her pale face flushing with something approaching innocence and her heart pumping her blood through her veins as liquid fire.  Being so close to a healthy, attractive male like Byakuya, the initial weakness she felt by Naraku’s invocation of her fertility was rapidly becoming an intense, sexual _strength_.  “Kiss him,” Naraku commanded to her with a sinister heat in his voice, stepping around her and Byakuya so as to be able to see the exact moment when their lips met.

            Unconsciously, Byakuya licked his lips in anticipation and Kagura’s expression grew steely with resolve.  Gently, she stepped closer to her handsome wind demon twin, placing her hands on his waist to anchor herself as she closed her eyes and touched her lips to his.  Their hearts sped up together as their lips met, their kiss chaste, solemn, and intimately pleasurable all at once.

            Kagura pulled away from Byakuya to gauge his reaction, their mouths parting with a soft gasp from each of them.  The male wind demon breathed with quiet snarls, his whole body seeming to pulse with a tangible _ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP._   It was the rhythm of a male demon’s imminent sexual conquest.  Just a few heartbeats passed for him before he finally surrendered himself to his desire.  To him, Kagura felt and smelled simply too good for him to resist.  He clamped his hands onto her upper arms, holding her tight and pulling her back in to kiss her again, much more ferociously.

            Naraku smiled as if in victory as Kagura moaned softly and opened her mouth to Byakuya, the gorgeous male and female wind demons beginning to play their tongues back and forth against one another.  The oni lord undid the various clasps of his spiked demonic armor and all 50 or 60 pounds of it slipped off of his body, clattering noisily to the stone floor.  He then positioned himself behind Kagura to pin her between himself and Byakuya, the two big, heavy, feverishly-aroused males immediately beginning to grind and thrust against her.

            With Naraku holding her in place, Byakuya pumped his hips against Kagura’s, letting her feel the great size and heat of his erection against her belly through their clothes.  He separated his mouth from hers, then began to nip and kiss his away along her elegant feminine jawline, working his way down to her throat.  Her inhibitions flowing away, rapidly replaced by passion, the wind witch let her head fall back onto one of Naraku’s broad shoulders to give Byakuya full access to her neck.

            Naraku ground his hips against Kagura’s perfect rear in time with Byakuya’s thrusts against her front.  Without any cold, metal armor to interfere in the play between his body and hers, the wind sorceress could feel Naraku’s cock pulsing monstrously against her ass.  It was hot, hard, and _huge_.  With two such big demonic cocks grinding against her lower body, Kagura felt her pussy beginning to weep and throb between her thighs, flooding over with creamy female lubrication for the first time.  Quivering with the stimulation, she hiked a thigh high up Byakuya’s side to start gyrating her hips between his and Naraku’s, relishing in their attention.

            “ _Yes…get ready for us,_ ” Naraku encouraged with a hiss, feeling, seeing, and _smelling_ Kagura start really getting into it.  Reluctantly, he then pulled away from her, leaving her and Byakuya standing alone.  The way Kagura looked over a shoulder at him, confusion and even _disappointment_ flashing through her ruby eyes, was something he knew he would remember for all time.

            Naraku focused his demonic power then released it in a single, powerful wave.  That wave seemed to warp reality around himself, Byakuya, and Kagura, transforming the cold, hard stone floor of the underground chamber into hot, living, undulating demonic flesh.  Byakuya recognized it immediately: it was the same stuff that Naraku had conjured into Sayaka’s bath house earlier that night.  The visceral pink matter flowed up the curved walls as molten wax, covering the nodes of bioluminescent material that had been providing light up to that point, sealing the chamber in warm, humid, aphrodisiac-laced darkness.

            At Naraku’s command, four orbs of rich, orange light, made out of the oni lord’s youki and glowing as bright candles, burst into existence in a perfectly rectangular pattern around ten feet above the bottom of the now flesh-covered chamber, restoring illumination to Byakuya and Kagura’s eyes as they trembled in each other’s arms.  Centered among the glowing orbs, a rectangular slab of flesh began to rise up out of the floor near them, coming to stand at a height of around three feet: a _bed_.  The bed’s fleshy texture transmutated into that of cloth, becoming as a set of bedsheets made of fine, deep red silks and satins.  A set of three large pillows grew out of the flesh to match, completing the unholy bedspread.

            Byakuya and Kagura looked to Naraku with questioning expressions.  “Did you think that we would do it _standing up?_ ” Naraku asked of them with a leering smile.  “We are demons, not _animals_.  Now, get undressed.”

            Kagura hesitated.  The physical desire she felt was nearly overwhelming, but with the bed that would be the site of her first sexual encounter laid out before her, the point of no return was at hand and she resisted.  Holding her preciously, Byakuya sensed her hesitation and joined her in it, neither of them making a move toward the bed, despite the power of their primal urges. 

            Naraku’s evil red eyes narrowed.  “Kagura.  Consider this the first test on the path to saving Kohaku’s life,” he said to the wind sorceress, moving to stand at the foot of his satin-covered flesh bed, directly in front of her and Byakuya.  “Give yourself to Byakuya and me… _willingly_.  Defy me no further and serve me faithfully in all things.  Do this, and Kohaku will be yours, to say nothing of the rest that this world of the living can offer you.”

            Kagura grit her teeth, baring her sharp incisors to Naraku, and swallowed thickly.  “Swear it,” she rasped.  Her will had come so undone that she would demand _Naraku’s_ honor in this matter, any matter _at all_.

            “I swear,” Naraku spoke, his lie as darkly pure as any as he had spun in his decades of existence.  “Come to me.”

            Kagura felt nothing but utter loathing for Naraku, but she also felt that she could take that hatred and feed it into her own sexuality.  She would fuck Naraku and Byakuya, but it would be an _angry_ fuck.  She left Byakuya’s warm, loving embrace and stepped toward Naraku with a bold, provocative sway in her hips, Byakuya following close behind her.  Once they were near enough to him, Naraku commanded a veil of thin, transparent violet flesh to grow from the chamber’s ceiling and descend, surrounding himself, his two lovely incarnations, and their bed: the bed’s canopy.  The canopy filtered the light emanating from Naraku’s glowing youki orbs, casting everything within in a shade of cool blue.  Kagura stood directly before Naraku and with trembling hands, she began to untie his dark lilac haori, working through it to get at the hard, muscled flesh beneath.

            As Kagura worked to undress Naraku, Byakuya worked to undress _her_.  His heart racing, he stepped up behind her, grinding against her again as he slipped his hands around her waist to begin untying the sash that held her outer, red-and-white kimono closed.  Once it was apart, the wind sorceress shoved Naraku’s haori off of his muscular shoulders, leaving his upper body bare, then lowered her arms to shrug out of her outer kimono, leaving herself clad in her blue intermediate kimono and the skimpy green yukata beneath it.  Byakuya’s hands went back to work, one of them attacking the sash of Kagura’s intermediate kimono, the other diverting upward to cup one of her large breasts, groping it through her kimono’s fine silk.

            Kagura mewled from the sensation of Byakuya fondling her breast.  She rewarded him by moving one of her hands behind her back, working it down between her body and his to grasp possessively at his most male area through his thin silk pants and give him more resistance to grind against.  Her nipples pulsed together underneath her remaining robes and she rubbed her thighs together to stoke the creamy liquid heat building up between them.  Once she couldn’t take any more, she arched her back and flexed her shoulders rearward to push Byakuya away from her, hurriedly finishing what he had started with her sash.  She pulled it apart, slipping out of the blue kimono it held closed to stand between Naraku and Byakuya wearing only her inner green yukata.

            Since she had moved around considerably since Byakuya gave her clothes to her earlier, Kagura’s inner yukata had become quite disheveled.  Already, its silken lining had pulled far apart to give Naraku an excellent view of her generous female cleavage.  Her cheeks burning in a furious blush, Kagura untied the yukata’s sash, and as she pulled her yukata open, Naraku’s view of her cleavage also became a view of her toned belly, and finally, the beautiful, hairless bulge of her dripping pussy.

            Kagura slipped her green yukata off her milky white shoulders to stand fully nude once again.  As Byakuya had discovered earlier, her unclothed body was a work of sexual art, for Naraku had designed it to be both attractive and powerful at once.  This ensured that only the most worthy male (or female!) could earn a night in her bed and _survive_ it.  Byakuya’s and Naraku’s hungry male hands gravitated toward her glorious flesh at once, Byakuya’s up to her breasts, while Naraku’s slinked down to the supple swell of her rear and the flat, white pane of her abdomen.

            As Byakuya massaged Kagura’s breasts and nuzzled at the crook of her bare shoulder from behind, Naraku focused his senses to once more seek out Kagura’s womb in her belly.  Just a few short minutes after he had activated it and her ovaries, it had blossomed as a beautiful, vibrant pink flower inside her, ready to drink in a male’s seed and fulfill its ultimate, life-giving purpose.  To either side of her womb, her ovaries were pulsing with healthy reproductive power, and with their female host cloaked in the pheromone-laden scent of two very _ready_ demonic males, each one shed an egg into its respective fallopian tube.

            “ _Fuck._ You’re _ovulating_ already,” Naraku hushed to Kagura with audible excitement, causing Kagura’s ruby eyes to widen a bit at the implication.  “My seed cannot impregnate you, but Byakuya’s _may_.  We’ll have to be careful.  We don’t want to deny Kohaku his opportunity to give you his child, now, do we?”

            Naraku slipped his hand down from Kagura’s abdomen to work it in between her thighs, cupping it to her throbbing cunt.  He traced his middle and index fingers over its silky, swollen petals, feeling her body’s copious lubrication for himself.  “You’re so wet,” he whispered, squeezing her ass to hold her against him and easing his middle finger up into her vaginal canal.  “Wet…and _tight!_ ”

            Kagura moaned softly, helplessly as Naraku began to penetrate her with his finger, pumping it in and out to feel the hot, sucking texture of her pussy’s inner muscles.  He anticipated feeling them sucking at his cock.  He worked his finger a little deeper, then stopped when he suddenly felt resistance, a thin, delicate membrane that dimpled beneath his fingertip and sprung back when he decreased the pressure.  “ _Kagura,_ ” Naraku began with breathless awe.  “You’re a _virgin_.”

            Truthfully, Kagura wasn’t all too surprised by this revelation.  She’d definitely never had sex before, not even with Sesshomaru, with whom she’d been thoroughly infatuated.  However, being Naraku’s walking, talking weapon, Naraku had forced her to fight against InuYasha and the wolf prince Koga on any number of occasions.  She remembered being knocked off of her magic feather mid-air a few times, once by InuYasha’s Kaze no Kizu, and another time when Koga leapt to her altitude and punched her squarely in her face.  The hard collisions with the ground that ensued were surely enough to break her ‘maidenhead.’ 

            But Kagura knew all of that was meaningless, though, since that body of hers was destroyed when Naraku killed her, seven years earlier.  Her new, second body was new in _every_ sense of the word, to Naraku’s hedonistic delight.  Behind her, Byakuya removed his hands from her breasts, to her displeasure, and the half-dressed oni lord in front of her withdrew his hand from between her thighs.  He grasped her waist to turn them in place so that she stood with her back to the bed.

            Naraku urged Kagura backward until her bare calves touched the cool satin sheets of the bed’s foot, then pulled her hips firmly to his.  To him, her big breasts felt soft and warm, providing a physical conduit for the sensation of her rapid heartbeat as they melded to his bare chest.  He closed in to kiss her hard and passionately, leaning his weight over her to lay her back upon the bed behind her. 

            Laying over Kagura, Naraku pumped his monstrous, cloth-covered cock against the wind witch’s dripping core, and she spread her thighs apart to allow his hips between them, heightening the intimate contact.  He drank a deep kiss from her mouth, then began to work his way lower, along her jawline, down her throat and her hammering pulse-point, and paused to lap at the hollow of her collarbone.  Gripping tightly at the satin bedsheets, Kagura arched her back and shook beneath him, panting and yowling softly for him and Byakuya to hear.  Naraku had charged his lips and tongue with small amounts of his youki and his kisses felt like harmless fire on her skin.

            Naraku began to move again, working further downward over the delicate ridges of Kagura’s sternum.  He reached up to take her breasts into his hands, even his large hands not coming close to covering them.  He squeezed and kneaded them together, then took one of those big, beautiful globes of demonic woman-flesh into his mouth, lathing his youki-charged tongue over its luscious, rosy nipple.

            Kagura cried out as a small orgasm, the first of her life, coursed through her suddenly.  Naraku’s youki flowed through her sensitive nipple as painless electricity, dispersing through her nervous system to push her into a mild, but thoroughly enjoyable climax.  Her hips bucked reflexively against Naraku’s chest as he continued to suckle at her breast, his cheeks pulling inward by the pleasurable suction he applied to it.  Her heart pounding, her pussy throbbed and wept between her thighs, her womb quivering as delicious sexual pleasure pulsed within it.  God help her, she wanted _more_.  Separating his mouth from Kagura’s nipple with a soft, wet _pop_ , Naraku continued his path down her body, kissing and nuzzling at her flat belly, lapping playfully at her navel until he was on his knees before her, kneeling on the flesh-covered floor at the foot of the bed.

            Naraku placed his hands on Kagura’s knees and the lovely wind witch did not resist as he pushed them far apart, spreading her shapely thighs wide to expose her utterly.  Her flushed, oozing pussy and the clean, pink hole of her ass lay completely bare to the eyes of her evil creator.  Byakuya, too, could see all of what Kagura’s body offered and he began to remove his clothes to join the wind sorceress in nudity.

            Kagura’s eyes roved hungrily over Byakuya’s body as he undressed.  Like Naraku, he concealed a very powerful, muscular male frame beneath his loose-fitting robes.  He shed his vestment and haori to bare his upper half, letting his female counterpart drink in the sight of his broad, firm chest and tightly-toned, washboard-like abdomen.  When he slipped out of his hakama at last, Kagura’s ruby eyes grew dark with wild demonic passion as she laid them on his brawny thighs…and the impressive male organs he had been carrying between them underneath his hakama’s fine silk.

            At full, almost eleven-inch erection already, Byakuya’s big cock twitched visibly in time with the beat of his heart, pointing upward in a gentle curve to nudge high up against his lower abdomen.  Glistening droplets of transparent male fluid slipped out of the thin, clean slit of his cock’s broad crown, drooling thickly down the underside of his meaty, elegantly-veined length.  His demonic reproductive constitution was in full effect; between Sayaka’s mouth and pussy, the pussy of one Sayaka’s regrettably-deceased junior priestesses, and his own hand, he had reached six messy orgasms just in the past two or three hours, but his balls remained heavy and full in their smooth sac.  He looked as if he hadn’t shot a load in a _week_.

            The pungent scent of Byakuya’s pre-cum reached Kagura’s nose and she almost came again.  Her body knew exactly what it needed, and to be so close to having it was driving her wild.  Between Kagura’s open thighs, Naraku used both index fingers and thumbs to spread the silky smooth, blood-flushed outer petals of the wind witch’s pussy far apart, revealing her pussy’s creamy pink interior.  Her exposed inner petals quivered by the rhythmic contractions of her most private muscles, the pristine, perfectly-formed orifice they protected shedding a healthy glob of milky female fluid.  Naraku salivated for a taste and he opened his mouth, extending his long tongue to lap up his rich, sexual treat.

            Kagura gave a low, full-lunged moan as Naraku began to eat her pussy up.  Releasing a hand from the death grip she had on the bedsheets beneath her, she shoved that hand down between her legs to weave it into her creator’s thick, sable mane and grip tightly.  Her muscles flexing with precision and power, she pumped her hips deftly, lifting them completely off the bed over and over to thrust her sex up into Naraku’s mouth and fuck his face.  When her hips left the bed, the evil oni lord seized the opportunity to thrust his hands up underneath her and take firm hold of her ass, squeezing ruthlessly and pulling her hard against his mouth to ravish her with more authority.  Burying his nose against the hooded pearl of her clit, he pressed his tongue deep into her, swirling it mercilessly against her inner walls and lathing it against her hymen, as if to _taste_ the physical symbol of her virginity.

            As Naraku worshipped Kagura’s cunt with his mouth and tongue, Byakuya moved to stand next to the bed on which Kagura lay, looming over her by her left side.  He took his cock in hand and began to fist it for his female reflection to see, coaxing himself to peak size and hardness with slow, measured strokes.  He spread his ample pre-cum up and down his throbbing length, lubricating it generously until it gleamed and pulsed in the light of Naraku’s candle-like youki orbs.  Still keeping Naraku’s head in place between her thighs with one hand, Kagura placed her other hand over the hand Byakuya used to jack himself, gently urging him to stop.

            Byakuya removed his hand from his cock as Kagura wanted, letting her take over and explore his hot male flesh.  She reached up to splay her free hand over his chest, feeling his heart beating beneath her palm and seeing the effect of each life-giving beat a split second later as his cock twitched in time.  Her hand began to drift lower, down over his chiseled abdomen, then to one side of him to feel the stunning muscle definition in his hip.

            Boldly, Kagura turned her palm upward and cupped it to Byakuya’s heavy balls, feeling their size, weight, and heat, as well as the texture of the smooth, hairless sac that contained them.  She squeezed his big male orbs gently and painlessly, causing Byakuya to draw in a harsh breath of rising pleasure.  She then wrapped her hand around his cock at last, just barely able to close her thumb and middle finger around its thick girth, and began to stroke him nice and slow, building up a rhythm that soon had him thrusting against her fist.

            Briefly, Naraku pulled away from Kagura’s cunt to take a breath.  Web-like threads of hot, viscous liquid, a mixture of her pussy cream and his own saliva, connected his chin to her sex.  He looked up along the wanton wind witch’s belly and breasts to see her jacking Byakuya off, taking twisted pleasure from the sight of his incarnations getting along so well.  “Kagura,” he addressed to get her attention, drawing her ruby gaze to him for a moment.  “Take him in your mouth.”

            Looking away from Naraku, Kagura stilled her hand at the base of Byakuya’s cock and watched an especially _pearly_ droplet of pre-cum slip out of the head of it, another welling up in its place.  As Naraku enjoyed the taste of her body, she wanted a taste of her wind demon twin, and she hardly needed any coercion.  She glanced up into Byakuya’s cobalt blue eyes, and keeping full eye contact with him, she began to pull very gently on him, encouraging him to step closer and place himself within reach of her glossy red lips.

            Byakuya breathed raggedly, feeling his prostate really pumping with desire at the thought of Kagura using her mouth on him.  Swiftly, he reached for the head of the bed and snatched a pillow from it, slipping it underneath Kagura’s ebony-haired head so that she wouldn’t strain her neck, much to her appreciation.  Trembling with need, he leaned over her so that his chest was heaving directly above her head, bracing both hands on the bed on the far side of her waist and bending his knees slightly to put his hips at the right level for her.

            Kagura pulled Byakuya to her more urgently now, stroking his cock to keep it big and hard as she brought its huge, flared head to her lips.  She opened her mouth to extend her long, pink tongue and lick at his cock’s oozing slit, lapping up his pre-cum and swallowing willingly.  A small wave of energy flowed through her at the taste, causing her to gasp out as her heart sped up.  Byakuya’s pre-cum was laced with his youki and it transmitted into her body the moment it touched her tongue.  It was his demonic body’s curiously evolved way of indicating his power and _virility_ to a potential mate.  Kagura could only wonder: if Byakuya’s pre-cum alone tasted so good, how would his _semen?_

            Byakuya tilted his head back and groaned passionately as Kagura opened her red lips wide and began to drink his cock in, swallowing him up inch by hard, thick, pulsing inch.  As an incarnation of Naraku, Kagura relied on the more obscene knowledge she had inherited from the oni lord and her own instincts to guide her.  In her mind’s eye, she could see brief glimpses of the bandit Onigumo’s life during his visits to the various brothels found in the Japanese countryside.  Various scenes of slutty geisha on their knees before him flashed through her mind, and she emulated what they had done then with their mouths.

            Kagura took Byakuya’s full eleven inches down her throat without much trouble.  Naraku had intentionally, and quite perversely, designed her body without a gag reflex.  Her throat bulged out visibly by Byakuya’s thickness but she remained able to breathe, breathing quickly but regularly through her nose.  Byakuya’s big balls and the hairless base of his cock soon came to rest directly against her face, and to her relieved pleasure, she found that he smelled very clean and healthy, as right then, she couldn’t breathe anything _but_ his scent.

            Byakuya pulled his cock out of Kagura’s mouth by a single inch and pushed it back in slowly, timing his advance and retreat to give her plenty of opportunity to breathe.  The flared head of him dragged back and forth over the walls of her _esophagus_.  He built a slow, easy rhythm with her, as if to make love to her mouth instead of fuck it outright.  Seeing this, Naraku stood up between Kagura’s thighs and stripped himself of his lilac hakama.  His cock, even bigger than Byakuya’s, practically fell out of his pants by its weight and he took it in hand to guide it down to Kagura’s cunt.

            Kagura tensed up as she felt Naraku press the head of his cock against her sex, pushing her outer and inner petals apart and beginning to breach her outermost gate.  The evil oni lord braced his hands on the bed to either side of her waist and began to lean his weight over her, applying his weight onto his cock and working it a little deeper with each nudge of his hips.  He felt the flimsy resistance of her maidenhead and he paused.

            “Now, hold very still,” Naraku warned to Kagura.  This was the only warning he gave to her as he reared back and thrust forward into her hot, sucking cunt with brutal strength, breaking through the proof of her virginity and sheathing himself within her completely.

            Her hymen tearing and her pussy’s inner muscles spreading wide to take Naraku’s girth, Kagura’s eyes widened and she _screamed_ into Byakuya’s cock, her scream coming as only a pitiful, muffled whine.  Hurriedly, Byakuya’s pulled out of her mouth completely to let her breathe and she wept aloud, sobbing by the pain that gripped her.  Naraku held still to let her adjust to his size, leaning over her to whisper evil comfort into one of her tapered ears.

            “ _Shhh_ ,” Naraku hushed.  “The pain will pass.  Soon, you’ll be feeling very, very _good_.”

            Angrily, Kagura planted a hand on Naraku’s chest and shoved his upper body away from her to get some space for herself.  She looked down between her thighs to see her female mound spread and bulged out obscenely by the sheer thickness of her evil master’s organ.  He was so long that she could see a faint indention in her abdomen, just past her navel.  His bulbous crown pressed firmly against the mouth of her womb and she could feel his heart beating inside her, the massive length of him pulsing against her inner muscles.

            Just as Naraku said, the pain did pass for Kagura.  She bled very little from her ‘defloration,’ her female demonic body able to heal and seal her broken blood vessels several times faster than a human woman’s.  The pain she felt quickly transformed into a rich corona of sexual warmth that filled her belly, spreading outward to saturate her entire body.  Soon, her natural lubricant began to flow freely around Naraku’s cock, gently sopping out of her around him to slip down between the taut globes of her rear.

            Feeling Kagura beginning to cream over around him, Naraku began to move, withdrawing from her cunt by just a little bit and sinking back in, over and over to work her body into familiarity with his.  The next sound out of her mouth was a small gasp of amazement as the sensation of her dark master’s cock beginning to move inside her opened brand new dimensions of pleasure to her.  Naraku built the penetration gradually, backing out and surging back in little by little until he was giving Kagura his full length on every thrust.

            Byakuya watched Kagura’s large breasts bounce upon her chest in mesmerizing fashion as Naraku fucked her deep and slow.  The beautiful wind witch looked up at her male reflection with unrestrained ecstasy glowing in her ruby eyes, and she pulled on his cock again, bringing it back to her mouth to suck him all the way in.  She slipped a hand around him to cup it over his firm rear and encourage him to thrust.  Quickly, he got back into the rhythm he had been working on before and soon, Kagura had two big, powerful demon males fucking her good and hard from both ends.

            Naraku increased his speed, leaning over Kagura to put his full weight behind his thrusts, threatening to fuck her further up the smooth-sheeted bed.  He reached deep into her to bury the head of his cock against the trembling wall of her cervix over and over, his heavy, tense balls patting ominously against her ass.  Watching her throat bulge out and sink back in as Byakuya pumped himself into her mouth, the evil oni lord felt the pressure begin to build within him.

            Byakuya slipped his left hand down between Kagura’s body and Naraku’s, seeking out the delicate, hooded pearl of her clit and beginning to massage it.  The effect was immediate as Kagura cried out into his cock again, sending delicious sexual vibrations into his very core.  Like Naraku, he could feel the creamy liquid pressure of his seed beginning to move, and he strove to make her come before he did.

            Naraku thrusts bordered on violence now as he worked with Byakuya to push Kagura into her pleasure.  The soft, rhythmic _gush_ of his cock pumping into her pussy became a sharp, rapid _fap, fap, fap_.  Kagura could do nothing but take it, feeling Naraku hammering against her cervix while Byakuya sought to fuck her head down into the pillow on which it lay.  Her heart began to beat faster, her chest heaving and breasts jiggling in perfect synchronization from Naraku’s harsh pounding.  She could feel something coming, something _huge,_ drawing closer and closer with each pass of the hard, throbbing cocks she took in her pussy and mouth.  At last, it was upon her, and she tensed up suddenly, her eyes going wide as full-blown orgasm took her hard.

            Byakuya felt Kagura come for him and Naraku, and his self-control reached its end.  He buried himself balls-deep in her mouth and held himself there as he erupted, big, hot loads of his creamy white seed pumping through his cock and bursting out of him to flow right down her throat.  The copious amounts of sperm-loaded fluid he gave her settled in her stomach, the demonic energy contained in it all osmosing through her stomach’s walls as if by digestion, soaking into the rest of her body to prolong her climax.  Kagura moaned into his spewing cock, his cock shoved so far down her throat that she hardly needed to swallow.

            Naraku gazed intently at Kagura’s cock-filled throat.  Byakuya was ejaculating with such volume and pressure that the oni lord could see the wind witch’s elegant female larynx being displaced outward from the inside with every heavy load of cum that flowed past it.  Naraku felt his balls grow suddenly tense at the sight and he shoved them to Kagura’s ass, mating his cock’s head to her cervix as he came.  He tossed his sable-maned head rearward, his hair fluttering over his spider-branded back as he _roared_ his pleasure. 

            Hot, thick semen left Naraku balls and surged through his cock with such intensity that Kagura could feel the underside of it bloating out against her pussy’s rippling posterior wall.  The orgasming oni lord held himself so deep within her that the thin slit at the end of his cock kissed against the tiny female opening in her womb’s mouth, his seed blasting through it and slamming against the walls of her womb to turn them thick, creamy white in just a few heartbeats.  For Kagura, the heat of Naraku’s seed was almost scalding and she could feel it working its way deeper, coursing into her fallopian tubes with ease.

            And then, Kagura felt nothing.  Her womb was completely full of Naraku’s seed, her ovaries _drowning_ in the stuff, but other than the churning heat of it, she felt _nothing_.  She realized that unlike Byakuya’s, his reproductive essence was empty, devoid of life, incapable of fulfilling the purpose for which Nature had designed it.  As Byakuya withdrew his cock from her mouth and throat, her first breaths were as sultry, cum-drenched laughter.

            Shivering as the last few pulses of male orgasm washed over him, Naraku scowled.  “What’s so funny?” he asked of Kagura.

            Kagura grinned up at her evidently-sterile master, thick wads of Byakuya’s semen clinging to her lips and rolling over her teeth.  “Your cum is so _weak_ ,” she rasped, catching her breath.  She flicked her tongue around her mouth, gathering up what remained of Byakuya’s orgasm as if to savor it, and she swallowed emphatically.  Even then, she could feel the male wind demon’s cream pulsing with energy inside her stomach, while the heat of Naraku’s was already fading in her womb.  “Actually, I can’t even say _that_.  It’s like…it’s like it isn’t even _there_.”

            Naraku’s evil red eyes narrowed dangerously with poorly-veiled anger.  “You’re right,” he confirmed to Kagura.  “My seed _is_ weak.  My body is made up from thousands of other demons, and so I have no true essence I can pass on to a woman, not even _you_.  Perhaps you’d like to give _Byakuya’s_ a try?”

            Naraku pulled out of Kagura’s cunt abruptly and a flood of his seed poured out of her after him, flowing down her rear and soaking into the satin sheets below.  Aggressively, he reached across the bed to Byakuya and fisted a hand in the male wind demon’s long, silky black hair, dragging him from his place at Kagura’s side and maneuvering him so that he stood in his place between the wind witch’s open thighs.  He shoved him forward so that he lay directly atop her.

            “Fuck her,” Naraku ordered to Byakuya.  “Let her decide if your cum feels better than mine!”

            Kagura’s grin faded.  Naraku would have _Byakuya_ take her?  She began to panic: she had felt the power of her male reflection’s seed and Naraku had told her that she was ovulating.  Right then, she could _feel_ an egg ready and waiting in her belly.  Naraku’s sperm were already dying off and Byakuya’s billions of little egg-seeking soldiers would be unopposed.  “Wait,” she gasped, scrambling for something, anything to change Naraku’s mind in the matter.  “What about _Kohaku?_ ”

            “Don’t worry,” Naraku reassured.  Kagura had heard _those_ words before from him and for her, they hardly inspired any confidence.  “Kohaku will have his chance.  If Byakuya impregnates you, I have several rather _entertaining_ methods of contraception at my disposal.”

            Byakuya could feel Kagura trembling beneath him and he pushed himself up onto his arms to gaze down at her.  His heart clenched at the fear he saw in her eyes and he bent down to kiss her softly.  “I’m sorry.  I have to do this,” he apologized as he reached down between their bodies to take hold of his cock, fisting it back to full erection and guiding it down to her sex.  He adjusted his hips between her thighs, getting into position.  “He’ll kill me if I don’t.”

            Kagura wept aloud as Byakuya eased forward, filling her with his cock.  Her body accepted him readily, having coped with Naraku’s ruthless spearing a minute earlier.  What remained of the oni lord’s semen lubricated their joining and the male wind demon’s heavy balls soon came to rest against his female twin’s perfect ass, the head of him pulsing against her womb.

            Byakuya began a brisk, penetrating rhythm with Kagura right from the start, backing out until the rim of his cock’s crown emerged from her sex and sliding right back in.  His shaft glistened and dripped with a heavy coat of her pussy fluid and Naraku’s seed.  For his own part, Naraku looked on with great satisfaction as he watched his two incarnations writhe together in unimaginable pleasure.  Soon, Kagura’s sobs became breathless cries, matched by Byakuya’s potent, male groans.  He felt his cock swelling back up at the incredible sight and he knew exactly where he wanted to put it next.

            Naraku stepped up behind Byakuya, covering the male wind demon’s muscular back with his equally-muscular chest.  He kicked his feet at little farther apart on the fleshy floor to make room.  Byakuya stilled, looking over a shoulder at his dark master and instantly recognizing the wild, depraved grin upon his face.  “You didn’t think I wouldn’t have my revenge, did you?” Naraku asked of him.  “Consider this as punishment, for your insolence at the bath house.”

            Byakuya winced as Naraku spread the firm cheeks of his ass apart and planted the head of his cock against the clean, pink hole they concealed.  The evil oni lord eased forward, the penetration made easier by the generous amount of Kagura’s female lubricant still clinging to him.  Inch after huge, meaty inch of Naraku disappeared inside Byakuya until Naraku’s broad hips met the wind demon’s ass, his balls trapped and throbbing between them.

            Kagura looked on in escalating horror as Naraku violated Byakuya anally.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so _sorry!_ ” she whispered to him, cupping his handsome face in her hands and kissing his forehead between his silken black bangs, trying to provide him some small comfort.

            Byakuya grunted in great discomfort, feeling Naraku’s heart beating _inside his ass_ , a sensation he never counted on experiencing.  Gradually, the pain began to fade as his demonic healing factor kicked in.  “It’s all right,” he said to Kagura, gearing up to begin moving inside her again.  “It’s only fitting.  I rape you, he rapes _me!_ ”

            Naraku pulled out of Byakuya’s ass a bit and Byakuya pulled out of Kagura’s pussy by an equal amount.  Byakuya then surged back into Kagura and Naraku did the same to him.  Gradually, they went faster and faster, deeper and deeper until Byakuya was giving his full length to Kagura once more, Naraku fucking him with equal depth.  The sadistic oni lord angled his thrusts to hit the male wind demon’s prostate on every stroke, making his forward thrusts exceptionally forceful so as to drive the male wind demon’s hips into those of his female twin all that much harder.

            Kagura had been primed for another orgasm ever since the one Naraku had fucked her into, and she shattered into it very quickly.  She tossed her head back against the pillow supporting it and _snarled_ as she came again and again, being nailed into the bed beneath her by close to 500 pounds of hard, male muscle.  The hot, sucking contractions of her pussy and the searing flood of her milky cream that followed drew Byakuya into his own climax.  His cock swelled and lifted deep within her, the head of it swelling as if to lock against her cervix as great, rope-like gouts of his cum burst out of it, pumping directly through her cervix and flooding into her womb.

            Byakuya’s seed filled Kagura’s womb completely, destroying Naraku’s vile fluid at the cellular level and leaving only healthy wind demon sperm behind.  The wind witch’s heart pounded by the stimulation as she felt the walls of her most precious chamber bathing in the rich, creamy liquid heat of a _worthy_ male at last.  Naraku slowed his strokes into Byakuya’s ass briefly, focusing his senses to ‘see’ Byakuya’s sperm closing in on Kagura’s egg.

            To Naraku, the heartbeats of his lovely incarnations were as thunderous music in his ears.  His own heart raced to match as Byakuya’s reproductive flood drew ever closer to its target inside Kagura’s belly.  He fucked Byakuya deep and slow, closing his eyes and speaking with psychotic pleasure.  “Just a little bit more, Kagura.  Oh, _yes,_ just a little bit more… _there we are!_ ”

            Naraku held his breath as the first of Byakuya’s sperm reached Kagura’s egg, their bulbous, gene-carrying heads touching to its delicate outer membrane.  And then… _nothing_.  Hundreds, then thousands of sperm followed, not one of them breaching the egg.  Gradually, they expended their limited energy and stopped moving, drifting away to be lost and absorbed in Kagura’s uterine aether.  Byakuya and Kagura…were _incompatible_.

            “Oh…” Naraku sighed in disappointment.  “It seems you two _can’t_ create life together.  It’s such a shame.  Your child would have been beautiful.”

            Naraku compensated for his disappointment by picking up his pace in Byakuya’s ass again.  He could still feel the male wind demon’s prostate throbbing from his orgasm inside Kagura and his own climax soon loomed.  Just a few more hard, frenzied thrusts and he was done, his cock throbbing brutally within Byakuya’s body and his seed bursting out to drench his colon, flooding him utterly.  Still coming, he pulled out and fisted himself hard to deliver his last few loads onto the male wind demon’s back, spattering his spider-shaped brand with his seed.

            Exhausted, Byakuya sank into Kagura’s arms and she held him close, resting with him upon the bed.  Admiring the emotion in their embrace, Naraku used his youki to levitate their bodies from the bed and pull the bed’s top sheet back, setting his incarnations back down.  Byakuya pulled out of Kagura to lay to her right, and as with Naraku before him, a heavy flood of his cum poured out of her, soaking into the sheets beneath her and soiling them further.  Naraku paid this no mind, however: the sheets were transmutated demonic flesh and needing no conventional cleaning. 

            Naraku climbed into the bed, laying to Kagura’s left so that the lovely, well-fucked wind sorceress lay with a big, powerful male to either side of her.  He pulled the bed’s top sheet over the three of them and scooted closer to Kagura to push her back into Byakuya’s chest, their bodies contoured together and their individual body heats joined into one.  Kagura felt her consciousness waning, the sensation of the warm, solid bodies behind and in front of her lulling her to sleep, even if she hated one of them with all of her heart.

            Underneath the sheet, Byakuya smoothed a hand up Kagura’s bare side from behind, kissing at her shoulder to soothe her, disregarding his own aches.  In front of her, Naraku grasped her chin and tilted her face to his.  Her lashes fluttered beautifully as she struggled to stay awake, even as hatred burned in her ruby eyes.  “Go ahead.  Sleep,” Naraku hushed to her.  “Rest well.  You’ll need your strength in the morning.”

            Unable to fight it off any longer, Kagura closed her eyes completely and did not open them again, her breathing slowing down and evening out as sleep claimed her.  Byakuya gave Naraku a muted leer as he fell asleep, as well.  Finally, with his incarnations dozing, Naraku got comfortable upon the bed to join them.  His dreams were any _normal_ person’s nightmare, for he had such ‘wonderful’ things planned for Kikyo and Kohaku.

 

- **To be continued-**

 


	14. Another Day, Another Oni

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leaving the ruins of the priestess Sayaka’s village behind them, InuYasha and his friends encounter another village with a demon problem and move to help without hesitation. The oni marauding the village turns out to be far more dangerous than any of them anticipated…

 

**(Soundtrack: Blind Guardian – Bright Eyes)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP6qMKW8jHo** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP6qMKW8jHo)

            InuYasha and pack, joined by Sesshomaru, Rin, Jaken, and Ah-Un, flew southwest, away from what remained of the miko Sayaka’s coastal village.  Naraku had turned the village into one giant trap for them to blunder into, transforming its entire populace into the undead.  This forced InuYasha to erase the village and everyone in it from the mortal plane using his Meido Zangetsuha.  Because of their perceived failure to prevent Naraku from attacking the village and the fact that they had learned nothing of his motive, the mood of the group was morose and they said little to one another as they flew.

            The group flew in the same configuration they had approached Sayaka’s village in.  Kagome, Shiori, and Shizu rode Shippo in his Fire-Fox form, while Sango and Miroku rode Kirara in her Battle-Cat form.  Rin and Jaken rode Ah-Un, and Sesshomaru kept InuYasha tethered to him mid-air with his youki so that they flew side-by-side.  To Kagome, with her knowledge of her time’s technology, the inu brothers looked rather as if they were riding an invisible, flying motorcycle with sidecar.  She might have laughed, but twelve years of seeing equally wondrous sights on an almost daily basis had desensitized her somewhat.  And she wasn’t in much mood to laugh to begin with, after the horrors she had seen just a few hours earlier.

            Leaving Sayaka’s village in the mid-morning, the pack’s moderate flight speed put them around a third of the way back to Edo by noon.  Then, Sesshomaru spotted plumes of thick black smoke billowing skyward on the forested horizon in the extreme distance, visible only to his superhuman daiyoukai eyesight.

            Filled with regret over his role in the fate of Sayaka’s village, InuYasha paid little attention to the horizon.  Since he was essentially a passenger inside an invisible field of Sesshomaru’s youki and could do nothing but let the daiyoukai carry him, he had an opportunity to think to himself, his amber gaze lost in the shadowy green of the endless forest passing briskly below him.  The private war that he and his pack had been fighting against Naraku was getting less private by the day, ensnaring innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with the things that he, his pack, and Naraku were fighting over. 

            Worse, in Sayaka’s bath house, InuYasha had seen what kind of sadism Naraku was capable of inflicting on the most attractive young women he encountered.  Even that revolting display was likely just ‘practice’ for when the cruel oni lord got his hands or _tentacles_ on Kagome, Rin, or any of the other women of his pack.  InuYasha could feel that the situation was getting closer and closer to being completely out of control, if it wasn’t already.

            Sesshomaru got InuYasha’s attention with a nudge.  “Look,” the daiyoukai said, gesturing to the horizon with a clawed, yet elegantly manicured hand.  “Smoke ahead.”

            InuYasha glanced up to see the smoke Sesshomaru referred to.  There was far too much smoke flowing skyward for its source to be bonfire; it looked as if an entire village, one _other_ than Sayaka’s had been set alight.  “ _Whoa_ ,” he awed, snapping out of his private thoughts.  At that point, he’d had his hands sheathed inside the sleeves of his red Fire-Rat haori, his version of the ‘Thinker’ pose.  He separated his hands, placing his right over his right thigh, closing his left around Tetsuseiga’s scabbard.  “What’s going on over _there?_ ”

            “What is it?” Kagome asked to InuYasha from her seat on Shippo’s back.

            “Smoke on the horizon!” InuYasha answered, raising his voice a bit so that Kagome could hear him over the sound of the air rushing by them.  “There’s a lot of it, but it’s pretty far off, still.  Maybe you can’t see it, yet?”

            “Sorry, but no,” Kagome replied, squinting her ethereal blue eyes to try and spot the smoke plume.  “Sango, Miroku – do you see it?”

            Sango looked behind her at Miroku; the houshi shook his head.  Turning back to Kagome, she said: “No, we can’t!  I guess our human eyes aren’t as good as a demon’s, half or full!”

            “I see it,” Shippo said, his Fire-Fox voice coming as a voracious growl.  Riding Shippo’s back, her alluring magenta eyes shining with focus as she looked over Kagome’s shoulder, Shiori added: “So do I.”

            Sesshomaru took a sniff of the air.  “We’re downwind.  It’s a human village of some size.  I smell burning wood, human blood, and an oni.  A _powerful_ oni.”  He then looked to InuYasha.  “You remain in charge, InuYasha.  What would you have us do?”

            InuYasha smelled the air for himself, detecting the same scents as Sesshomaru.  “You’re _right_.  If we can smell human blood and an oni at the same time, then someone over there might need help,” he said.  Decisively, he then spoke to the entire pack.  "Should we check it out?”

            A series of energetic affirmations resounded from InuYasha’s pack members, a combination of “Yes!”, “Yeah!”, and “Let’s do it!”  Everyone knew they had failed to save Sayaka’s village and their thoughts revolved around finding some kind of redemption, no matter its scope.  “Okay, Sesshomaru, take us there,” InuYasha ordered to his brother, as politely, yet firmly as he could.  “Everyone else, follow us!”

            Sesshomaru changed course to put the smoke directly ahead of him.  Shippo, Kirara, and Ah-Un banked to follow.  They sped up their flight and in a short time, they came upon the source of the smoke, a human village that appeared to have been raided by a small army of torch-wielding bandits, not a single oni, as Sesshomaru had smelled.  Situated at the foot of a fairly short, forested mountain, the village was a large collection of wooden houses built to either side of a well-traveled dirt path, and several of those houses were either on fire or smoking heavily.

            To the relief of InuYasha and everyone else in the pack, there were many survivors running between the village’s burning buildings and a nearby river, working to fight the fires.  A large group of them had formed a human chain, passing buckets of water from the river into the village to douse the fires as quickly as they were able.  This was a stark contrast to the utter lifelessness that InuYasha and pack had found when they reached Sayaka’s village, earlier.  Whoever or whatever had attacked this village didn’t seem to be concerned with killing and/or _raping_ everyone in it down to the last man, woman, and child, as Naraku had been.

            Despite their work, the villagers on the ground were paying enough attention to the sky to see InuYasha and pack flying past them, and their shouts were not ones of jubilation, but fear.  Cries of “ _Demons!_ ” were common, very bad sounds to InuYasha’s sensitive dog ears.  He remembered how the guards at Sayaka’s village reacted with hostility the moment Sesshomaru revived them with Tenseiga.  In the interest of his pack’s safety, not alarming the villagers below any further, and respecting the authority of the guards posted at the village’s various entries and exits, InuYasha decided that it would be best if he and his pack didn’t simply swoop down and land squarely in the middle of it all. 

            InuYasha sighted a place to land well outside of the village outskirts, a grassy field populated by a few trees, and pointed Sesshomaru to it.  “There.  Land down there,” he instructed to his elder brother.

            Dutifully, Sesshomaru turned and descended to the field InuYasha designated to him.  The rest of the pack followed, and once on the ground, Kagome, Shiori, and Shizu dismounted Shippo, while Miroku and Sango hopped off of Kirara.  Rin and Jaken stepped down off of Ah-Un and Sesshomaru freed InuYasha from his youki field, setting him onto the ground with enough care that InuYasha didn’t feel his brother was in a hurry to get rid of him.  This was a heartening thought for him.

            “InuYasha, what’s the plan?” Sango asked as she and the rest of the pack assembled around their pack leader.

            Sango stood with the smoking, oni-attacked village at her back, and InuYasha glanced around her to see its bow/arrow and polearm-equipped guards taking defensive positions.  “Right now, we don’t know very much, so we take it slow,” he said to his taijiya friend and lover.  “We walk right up to the guards, but not too fast.  We should make it clear that we’re not here to hurt anyone, but at the same time, we shouldn’t look like we’re out for an afternoon stroll.  Then, we ask them what happened.”

            “The guards are agitated,” Sesshomaru said to InuYasha, smelling human fear in the air.  “Their arrows may fly without provocation.  They’re not much threat to us, so perhaps only we two should approach first?”

            “Good idea,” InuYasha agreed.  “Let’s go.  Everyone else, stay here.”

            “I’m going with you,” Kagome said, stepping up to join InuYasha and Sesshomaru as they prepared to approach the village.

            “No, Kagome, you should stay here,” InuYasha warned firmly.  “You might get _shot_.”

            “I won’t,” Kagome reassured.  “They won’t shoot a miko.  I’m wearing the robes, aren’t I?  And besides, if they tried, Sesshomaru here will use his daiyoukai super-speed to snatch their arrows right out of the air!  Won’t you, Sesshomaru?”

            Sesshomaru cocked an elegant eyebrow at Kagome’s bright-eyed optimism.  He saw quite a bit of Rin in her, making her even more attractive to him than she was already.  “Hn,” he grunted in agreement.

            InuYasha gave Kagome a look of concern and Kagome added: “It’ll be safer if I go with you.  I know this sounds bad, but a village that’s just been attacked by a demon probably won’t react very well to two others that just show up out of the blue.  Just like before, at Sayaka’s village - if I talk to the guards, I can calm them down a little.”

            “Okay,” InuYasha relented with a sigh.  “Just…just stay behind me and Sesshomaru, will you?”

            Kagome nodded and she, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru began to move toward the oni-ravaged village.  Kagome walked behind the inu brothers as InuYasha requested, so as to use them as shields in case the village guards started shooting their bows.  A few arrows would do little harm to them, as she had seen both of them survive much more serious wounds, some of which they had inflicted on each other.  That knowledge made her wonder: the two half-brothers were getting along exceptionally well.  At the very least, they weren’t _fighting_.  The ‘talk’ that InuYasha told her he’d had with Sesshomaru the night before must have been a serious one.  She decided to ask them about it when they were finished with whatever awaited them in the village before them.

            Once the miko, hanyou, and daiyoukai were within what the guards considered shouting range, the guards did just that.  “That’s far enough, youkai!  And… _Priestess!?_ ” the highest-ranking guard called out, leery of InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s obvious demonic features but given pause by Kagome’s Shinto miko outfit.  “Who are you and what do you want?”

            Stepping out from behind InuYasha and Sesshomaru, closing just enough so that she didn’t have to yell for the guards to hear her, Kagome spoke first.  “Please, be calm!  I’m Higurashi Kagome.  I’m a miko from Edo,” she introduced herself.  She then looked to InuYasha and Sesshomaru for a moment, trying to find the right words to describe them.  She decided that in this case, a lie would be more believable than the truth.  “These two are InuYasha and Sesshomaru.  Uh, they’re my… _bodyguards._ ”

            The guard leader snorted.  “Bodyguards?  What are a couple of demons doing protecting a _priestess?_ ”

            “I defeated them in battle some years ago,” Kagome replied quickly, to InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s surprise and slight annoyance.  “I could have purified them, but I spared their lives and bound them to me.  Now, they serve me as my protectors.  They won’t hurt you or anyone, as long as you don’t try to hurt _me,_ that is.”

            InuYasha and Sesshomaru looked at Kagome with raised eyebrows, then looked back to the guards before them.  They appeared to believe Kagome and the miko from the future continued: “We saw the smoke.  What happened here?”

            The guard leader furrowed his thick brows at the thought of a miko binding a couple of demons into her service, but he replied readily, if tersely.  “Oni attacked us.  Bastard torched some of our houses and kidnapped a few of our women.  That was a few hours ago.”

            “Kidnapped?  _Oh, no…_ ” Kagome hushed.  She didn’t know oni to take people for ransom, only food, depraved hunting sport, and perhaps _baser_ needs.

            “Our other friends are waiting in the field over there,” InuYasha pointed, speaking urgently.  He knew that if the oni had attacked the village and taken some of its women _hours_ earlier, several terrible things could have happened already.  “There’s quite a few of us and one of us is a professional demon hunter.  Is there anything we can do to help?”

            The guard leader narrowed an eye.  A miko and a _taijiya_ traveling alongside youkai, their natural _enemy?_   Still, he wasn’t so foolish as to turn down an earnest offer to help.  “Maybe.  Let’s get right to it.  Can you kill the oni and get our women back?” the guard leader asked, straight to the point as his men looked on in great interest.

            “Kill the oni?  You _bet_ ,” InuYasha replied confidently.  Between himself and Sesshomaru alone, they had defeated some very powerful foes, ones with appropriately epic-sounding names like ‘Ryukotsusei,’ and ‘So’unga.’  “We can kill the oni if it’s really necessary, but as far as getting your women back unharmed, the sooner we get to work, the better.”

            “Fine.  I’ll take you to my lord right away,” the guard leader said.  “Follow me.”

            InuYasha turned and waved to the rest of his and Sesshomaru’s combined pack, signaling for them to follow.  As they moved to rejoin, Shippo changed back into his humanoid form and Kirara reverted to her housecat form, so that the villagers, likely unused to seeing youkai of any kind, would see them as less obvious a threat.  Unable to transform, Ah-Un could do nothing about his size and shape, though.  Kagome hoped that his muzzle and saddle would cause the villagers to see him more as a semi-domesticated beast of burden than a fire-breathing dragon out of legend.

            Thankfully, the villagers had not panicked completely, and given that the guards were accompanying them, InuYasha and his motley pack no longer attracted cries of terror so much as strange looks and whispers of gossip.  After a short, brisk walk along the village’s debris-strewn main street, they came upon the home of the village’s lord.  It was a modest house, hardly more ornate than that of anyone else in the village, but the concentration of armor-clad soldiers waiting outside indicated that someone quite important to the village’s affairs lived inside.

            The soldiers outside the house gave InuYasha and Sesshomaru especially suspicious looks, but since they were preceded by the leader of the village guard force, they did not obstruct their path.  The guard leader entered the house, Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru following behind him while the rest of the pack waited outside.  Inside the sparsely-decorated home, three men sat upon thin cushions around a short wooden table, locked in deep conversation as they pored over a hand-drawn map of the village and the surrounding countryside. 

            A middle-aged woman, presumably the wife of one of the men, sat alone in a corner of the room, her cheeks streaked with dried tears.  Apparently, she had been crying for some time.  Back at the room’s center table, each man wore a full suit of 16th-century Japanese samurai armor, their respective helmets sitting nearby, and each carried a pair of full-length katana.  They looked as if they were about to go out and _fight_ something.

            Two of the three men wore black armor with gold trim, while the third’s armor was painted a garish red and equipped with a _sashimono_ , a battle standard of printed linen attached to a rigid, rectangular frame of bamboo, so that he could be easily spotted by his soldiers upon a battlefield – the leader.  “Then it is agreed,” the leader said to his lieutenants.  “We three shall each lead a group of men into the forest and up the mountain, in the direction of the oni’s den.  When one of us finds it, he shall sound a horn to call the others to his side.  Then, we _attack_.”

            The leader of the guards escorting Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru approached the man in red armor and bowed deeply to him.  “My lord, some people to speak with you – a miko and two youkai.  They say they can help with the oni.”

            The woman sitting in the corner perked up at the mention of ‘help,’ while the red-armored lord of the village looked up from his map and regarded Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru with some surprise.  He stood from his cushion and his lieutenants stood as well.  “Strange.  I have not yet sent for help,” the lord contemplated, stepping around his map table to stand before Kagome, InuYasha and Sesshomaru at her side.  Dismissing his guard leader with a wave of a hand, he bowed politely, respectful of Kagome’s miko appearance, but wary of InuYasha and Sesshomaru.  “Esteemed priestess, I am Hideki Saito, the lord of this village.  Who are you?”

            “My name is Higurashi Kagome.  I’m a miko from Edo,” Kagome introduced herself for the third time that day, returning Saito’s bow curtly, yet respectfully.  She gestured to InuYasha and Sesshomaru as they stood at her side.  “I told your guard that these two demons are my bodyguards.  That’s only partially true.  This is InuYasha, my husband, and this is Sesshomaru, InuYasha’s brother and my brother-in-law.”  Privately, Kagome’s embarrassment grew: she was completely happy to introduce InuYasha as her husband, and she was still grappling with the excitement of thinking of Sesshomaru as a brother of _any_ kind, but she always felt more than just a little pretentious whenever she advertised herself as a ‘miko,’ an icon of Japanese religious culture. 

            Kagome was from 20th/21st century Japan, and like many, if not most people her age around the world at that time, she had seen the American film ‘Star Wars.’  The Star Wars franchise was inspired at least partially by Japanese culture, the plot of the first film loosely based on the Akira Kurosawa film ‘The Hidden Fortress,’ and the series’ ‘Jedi’ named for the American interpretation of the word _Jidai_ , as in _Sengoku Jidai_.

            Knowing that, Kagome felt a bit like Luke Skywalker.  In 1983’s ‘Return of the Jedi,’ Skywalker introduced himself to slug-like gangster lord Jabba the Hutt as a full-fledged Jedi Knight, having undergone much training but without the accomplishment of defeating the evil Emperor Palpatine or his servant, Darth Vader.  Likewise, Kagome had learned many things during her travels with InuYasha and the others, but like Skywalker, she hadn’t yet defeated her own ultimate enemy, Naraku.  She wished she didn’t have to keep relying on the title of miko, but it, the red-and-white miko outfit she wore, and the occasional display of her reiki were useful in that they caused people such as Saito to take her much more seriously than if she was simply ‘Kagome’ in her absurd and anachronistic sailor schoolgirl uniform.

            “ _Kagome_ ,” Saito repeated to himself, committing the miko’s name to memory.  He then looked at InuYasha and Sesshomaru as they stood at Kagome’s side.  “You’re a miko, but your husband and brother-in-law...are _youkai_?”

            “Yes,” Kagome answered.  “I know it may look odd to you…”

            Saito nodded.  “Yes, it does, I’m afraid.  But we don’t have time to talk about that now.  My men and I are about to leave.  You say you can help me and my village with the oni that plagues us?  If so, then please, speak _quickly_.”

            “We overheard you talking just now,” Kagome said.  “You’re about to go looking for the oni’s den?  Your guard says he’s taken some of your village’s women.  We want to help.”

            “There’s little room for anything but fighting, now,” Saito warned.  “Is that something you are capable of?”

            “Absolutely,” Kagome said without hesitation.  Right then, with InuYasha and Sesshomaru, she had two of the heaviest hitters in Japan standing right beside her, to say nothing of what she could do with her reiki.

            Now, the woman sitting in the corner stood and rushed to Saito’s side.  “Please, Miko-sama, do something, _anything!_ ” she begged of Kagome, throwing herself to the floor to prostrate herself, to everyone’s surprise.

            “We’ll do whatever we have to,” Kagome said, kneeling to the floor and helping the woman to sit up.  “Who are you?”

            Saito knelt as well and took the upset woman into his arms.  “This is my wife, Keiko.  This summer, she and I will have been married twenty years.”

            InuYasha’s golden eyes narrowed as a realization dawned in his mind.  “Saito-san,” he addressed respectfully.  “Who are these women that have been taken?  Who are they _exactly?_ ”

            Saito rubbed Keiko’s shoulders to try and comfort her in some small way and he looked into InuYasha’s golden eyes with steely intensity.  “They are our daughters.  Keiko’s and mine.”

            “Oh, God,” Kagome hushed, looking up at InuYasha.  InuYasha’s thoughts were similar to hers.  Now, the village’s potential loss had a face: that of a bereaved mother and father.

            “We need to move, _right now_ ,” InuYasha concluded, eager to spare Saito and Keiko whatever suffering he could.

            “Agreed,” Saito replied.  He looked over a shoulder to his lieutenants as he helped Keiko to her feet.  “Ready the men.”

            Gathering their black-and-gold helmets, the lieutenants bowed to Saito and stepped around Sesshomaru to exit the house.  Kagome stood along with Keiko and, growing thoughtful, InuYasha approached Saito to speak specifically to him.  “Your plan is to try and _find_ this oni’s den, isn’t it?” he asked.  “As if you don’t already know where it is?”

            “That’s right,” Saito confirmed.  “We’re to split up into three groups and run a search pattern up the mountainside.  Why?”

            “I can lead you right to the oni,” InuYasha explained.  “Better yet, I can lead you right to your _daughters,_ if they aren’t in the same place as the oni.”

            “What do you mean?” Keiko asked.

            Kagome recognized InuYasha’s train of thought immediately.  “InuYasha is inu hanyou, half dog demon,” she said.  “Sesshomaru is _full_ dog demon.  He and InuYasha can _smell_ things no ordinary person can.”

            “Do you have something that belongs to your daughters?” InuYasha requested of Saito and Keiko together.  “Something that they kept close to them a lot?  Like a piece of clothing?”

            Eyes widening, Keiko pulled away from Saito and rushed into an adjacent room, returning with two finely-made kimono, one dyed green and blue, the other dyed orange and red.  “Here,” she said, handing the two kimono to InuYasha.  “Our daughters’ names are Yume and Jun.  These kimono are a couple of their favorites.”

            InuYasha accepted the two kimono from Keiko and brought one to his nose, sniffing it and breathing deeply of the scent ingrained into it.  His demonic canine sense of smell allowed him to interpret it in much more detail than a human could.  “The scent is fresh.  _Good_ ,” he affirmed.  “Assuming the trail is fresh, as well, I can follow it for _miles_.”

            InuYasha handed the other kimono to Sesshomaru, and the daiyoukai smelled it to learn its scent, as well.  “We have the scents, now.  We should go,” he suggested.

            Saito turned to Keiko and held her by her shoulders.  “This priestess and her demon friends are truly a blessing.  With their help, I _will_ bring our girls back, Keiko.  Believe that.”

            “I do,” Keiko said.  “Bring back our girls and make that oni _pay!_ ”

            Saito nodded and turned away from Keiko, inviting Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru to exit his house.  He followed behind them.  As the miko from the future, her mate, and her mate’s brother stepped outside, they found the rest of the pack waiting for them.  Nearby in the village’s central road, Saito’s soldiers began assembling into groups led by the village lord’s lieutenants, leading Miroku to approach InuYasha.

            “Kagome, InuYasha, what’s going on?  What have you learned?” Miroku asked insistently as the rest of the pack listened closely.

            “An oni attacked this village and kidnapped two of its women, the daughters of the village’s lord.  We’re going to help him get them back,” InuYasha said.  “The lord’s name is Saito.  Here he is now.”

            Slipping his red samurai helmet over his head, Saito moved to stand at Kagome’s side, next to InuYasha and Sesshomaru.  He regarded Miroku and Sango with the most interest, recognizing Miroku as a houshi and Sango as a taijiya.  He was less certain what to make of the others.  “Kagome-sama, are these friends of yours also?”

            “Yes, Saito-san.  The houshi’s name is Miroku and the taijiya’s is Sango,” Kagome said, next introducing the rest of the pack.  “And these are Kirara, Shizu, Shiori, Shippo, Rin, Jaken, and Ah-Un.”

            Saito bowed to the assembled pack, regardless of their demonic nature.  “Please forgive me for not greeting you all individually,” he apologized.  “But now is not the time.  Battle is upon us.”

            InuYasha nodded in agreement.  “Shizu, Shiori, Rin,” he began, addressing the three non-combatant women of the pack in turn.  “It would be dangerous for you to come along.  You should stay here in the village while we go looking for Saito’s daughters.”

            “Right,” the three women agreed, deferring to InuYasha’s judgement in this particular matter.

            “If it is agreeable, feel free to wait inside my home,” Saito offered to Shizu, Shiori, and Rin at once.  “You’ll be comfortable and you can keep my wife company during the difficult time.”

            “It is definitely agreeable.  Thank you,” Shizu said, on behalf of herself, Shiori and Rin.  The three women then separated from the pack and entered Saito’s house as he offered. 

            Next, InuYasha spoke to the more battle-oriented remainder of his pack, Miroku, Sango, and Shippo especially.  “The rest of you should stay here, too,” the hanyou warrior instructed.  “With the help of Saito and his men, Kagome, Sesshomaru, and I can handle the oni.  Stay behind to protect the village, in case we miss the oni and it comes back here, or if anyone _else_ decides to show up.”

            In this case, everyone in InuYasha’s pack fully understood that ‘anyone else’ meant Naraku or his incarnation, Byakuya.  InuYasha avoided mentioning them by name so as not to give Saito anything other to worry about other than his daughters’ safety.  With that in mind, everyone also knew that, Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru alone comprised more than half of the pack’s total fighting strength.  Even by leaving the rest of the pack to protect Saito’s village, InuYasha was gambling that Naraku _wouldn’t_ try anything while he was busy rescuing Saito’s daughters from their oni captor.

            At last, InuYasha turned to Saito.  “I think that’s everything.  Sesshomaru and I will scout ahead, following your daughters’ scents while you follow behind us.”

            “Very well,” Saito replied.  He turned around to speak to his lieutenants and the soldiers they led.  He drew his katana from its sheath and held it above his head, calling out with a mighty shout.  “ _Ikuzo!_ ”

            _Let’s go!_ Saito’s men responded with a thunderous “ _Rah!_ ” and they began to march forward out of the village, following close behind Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru.

~~~~

 

            High up the side of the forested mountain that Saito’s village sat at the foot of, the cries of two terrified young women echoed out of the dark, yawning mouth of a deep stone cave.  Those cries were those of Saito’s daughters and so the cave was the den of the oni that had kidnapped them.  At the back of the cave, the two women lay upon crude beds of straw, their arms and legs chained to the cave’s granite floor.  As they struggled to escape, their cries began to reach a hoarse crescendo and a gravelly male voice silenced them angrily.

            “Shut the _fuck_ up!” the voice commanded.  The creature it belonged to crouched over Yume, the elder of Saito’s daughters, and slammed a hard fist into the stone beside her head, crushing it to leave a fist-shaped indention in it.  Abruptly, she and Jun fell silent, trembling uncontrollably by their captor’s violent nature.

            Satisfied by the resulting silence, the oni stood up above Yume to reach his full, seven-foot-plus height, height that would put him on equal standing with Sesshomaru or Naraku.  With his height came a weight of more than 300 pounds, most of it raw, vascular muscle covered in scarred, olive green skin.  His coal-black hair was long and coarse, rarely washed or brushed, and his lower jaw jut forward from beneath his upper one, his massive lower incisors sticking straight up over his upper lip.  His eyes were as obsidian spheres and he wore a loincloth of stitched together animal skins.  Two pearly white horns protruded from his forehead and curved backward over his hair, looking like those of a wild ram.  His name: _Kuno_.

            Kuno stepped away from Yume to return to the carcass of the cow he had been eating on.  Before he had kidnapped Yume and Jun, he had stolen the cow whole from Saito’s village, moving all thousand-plus pounds of it up to his mountain cave with ease.  He had made a fire pit with which to cook it and he ripped a long, sinewy chunk away from its ribs, beginning to heat it up in his fire pit’s crackling flames.

            As he cooked his beef, the thieving, kidnapping oni looked over to Yume and Jun, shooting them a sly grin.  He held up the beef for them to see.  “Keep on being quiet, and maybe I’ll let you have some.”

            “Please,” Yume gasped, her voice laden with pleading.  “Please let us go!”

            “No way,” Kuno declined.  “This is _my_ land.  Your dipshit father can either pay tribute, or pay the _consequences_.  You two belong to me, now.”

            “Our father will come,” Jun threatened through her tears.  “He’ll come, and then he’ll have your _head!_ ”

            “ _Heh,_ ” Kuno chuckled.  “I suppose he _will_ come.  But it won’t be my head he’ll have.  He’ll have his own head…shoved right up his _ass._ ”

            Kuno’s weapons sat near him, leaning up against the cave wall.  One was a very large katana befitting his physical size, an _odachi_.  It was the Japanese equivalent of a Scottish claymore, and so an ordinary man would need two hands to use it effectively, whereas Kuno could use it with just one.  His other weapon was far larger, a steel-studded _kanabo_ , a giant, reinforced club typically associated with the brutish oni that wandered the Japanese countryside.  Whereas Kuno’s odachi was around seven feet long, his kanabo was nearly _fifteen,_ weighing hundreds of pounds and appearing to have been carved directly out of a large tree trunk.  Its size relative to its wielder was reminiscent of the human mercenary Bankotsu and his giant halberd, _Banryu_.

            A series of four amber jewels had been embedded into the handle of Kuno’s kanabo, and one of them began to glow, drawing Kuno’s attention.  “Look at that,” Kuno noted to Yume and Jun, reaching out and turning his kanabo to him, so as to study its jewels more directly.  “This might your father now.”

            The jewels in Kuno’s club corresponded to a set of others he had left behind in his forest outside his cave.  He had arranged them in concentric, evenly spaced semi-circles, each one directing an invisible beam of light between itself and the adjacent ones in its respective circle.  It was a sort of silent alarm system, calibrated to light up one of the jewels in the club if the light beams were interrupted by a solid object, such as a man walking upright.  The way the first jewel in his club’s handle blinked on and off repeatedly told Kuno that _several_ men were approaching his cave.

            The first jewel in Kuno’s club ceased flashing and the second one began, much more quickly than Kuno had predicted.  “ _Well,_ ” the oni spoke in surprise.  “It seems old Saito knows the way to go, at least.”  Setting his beef down and standing up from his fire-pit, he slipped his sling-equipped odachi over his back and balanced his kanabo over a shoulder with a quiet grunt.  “Sit tight, girls.  I’ll be right back.”

~~~~

 

            With Kagome, InuYasha, and Sesshomaru leading the way, the inu brothers divining the scents of Yume and Jun, Saito and his soldiers advanced quickly up the forested mountainside.  All of them were unaware that Kuno was alerted to their presence.  In short order, they sighted the mouth of the oni’s cave and InuYasha signaled for everyone to stop.

            “Look,” InuYasha warned, pointing ahead of him.  Specifically, he pointed to the wide clearing in front of the entrance to Kuno’s cave.  “Look at how all the trees have been pulled up, here.”

            Indeed, every tree within fifty yards of Kuno’s den had been cut down and their stumps ripped right out of the mossy earth to be thrown elsewhere.  “It almost looks like…an _arena_ ,” Kagome observed.

            “This is a trap,” Sesshomaru concluded bluntly.  “Clearly, the oni expected someone to come looking for the women he took.”

            Saito stepped up beside InuYasha and Kagome, gripping the scabbard of his katana to keep it steady for a quick draw.  “What should we do?”

            “You and your men stay here while I move in and check things out,” InuYasha answered.  “Kagome, Sesshomaru – you stay, too.  If this is a trap, then you won’t get caught in it with me.”

            “Be careful,” Kagome bid to InuYasha.  “We’ll be right here if you need help.”  For his own part, Sesshomaru said nothing, only turning his head to eye Kuno’s cave suspiciously.

            Carefully, InuYasha moved forward out of the forest and into the clearing in front of Kuno’s den, advancing upon its maw-like entrance.  Along with the scent of Saito’s daughters, the scent of the oni that had taken them was strong; it was most likely inside the cave with them.  InuYasha could smell some kind of meat cooking, but thankfully, it didn’t smell _human_.  This was a reassuring thought for him, as it led him to think that he, Kagome, Sesshomaru, and Saito hadn’t arrived too late.

            Just as InuYasha began to ascend to the cave’s mouth, Kuno called out from within.  “Good morning, friend!”  At the same time, a translucent energy barrier of swirling amber came into existence around the clearing in front of the cave, sealing Kagome, Sesshomaru, Saito, and Saito’s men out, and Kuno and InuYasha _in_.

            “ _Shit_ ,” InuYasha cursed under his breath, looking around him at the barrier surrounding him.  The barrier formed a sphere only fifty yards wide, so for an extremely agile half-demon like him, there wasn’t a whole lot of room to move, especially in the vertical plane.  Kuno stepped forward out of his cave’s darkness, leaping down to the ground to stand directly before InuYasha, causing the hanyou warrior to leap back away from him.

            “I guess _you’re_ the oni we’ve been hearing so much about,” InuYasha scowled, sizing Kuno up.  Kuno was actually smaller than InuYasha expected, standing at ‘only’ seven feet tall.  His idea of a proper oni was something more like fifteen or twenty feet and a couple thousand pounds.  Still, Kuno looked big and strong enough that InuYasha could see Saito and his men being unable to fight him off.

            “The name’s Kuno,” Kuno introduced himself proudly.  “Who’re you?”

            “I’m InuYasha,” InuYasha answered curtly, warily gripping Tetsuseiga’s scabbard with a hand.  Aside from his lack of physical size relative to other oni he had seen, and despite his brutish appearance, this ‘Kuno’ evidently had the presence of mind to speak in complete sentences, rather than animalistic grunts or roars.  “You took a couple of women from the village down the mountain.  Let them go and we’ll leave.”

            Balancing his kanabo over a shoulder with one hand and holding his odachi in the other, Kuno stepped around InuYasha, utterly dismissive of him.  He approached his amber energy barrier and regarded Kagome, Sesshomaru, Saito, and Saito’s men as they stood on the other side.  “Hello, Saito-san,” he greeted to the village lord specifically, his voice laden with false, mocking respect.  His barrier prevented solid matter from passing through, but allowed the vibrations of air to pass through as sound.  The green-skinned oni looked to Kagome and Sesshomaru, then to the small horde of Saito’s soldiers gathered in the forest nearby.  “It looks like you’ve made some powerful friends, lately.  A hanyou, a miko, and even a _daiyoukai!_   Judging by the hair and the eyes, I’d say your hanyou and daiyoukai are related.  It also looks like you’ve brought every single one of your men with you.  Were you expecting a fight?”

            “Only if you make that necessary,” Saito warned.  “Where are my daughters?”

            “They’re safe,” Kuno replied, honestly enough.  “But they’re not _your_ daughters anymore, are they?  They belong to _me_. _”_

            “So you say,” InuYasha countered venomously.  “We’re not leaving without them.  Make us fight you for them and you’ll _regret it_.”

            “Will I, now?” Kuno posed, turning around to face InuYasha directly.  “Tell me, ‘ _I-nu-Ya-sha_ ,’ what’s Saito paying you to come here?”

            “Nothing,” InuYasha answered.  “I just like helping people.  So I say again: let Saito’s daughters _go_.”

            Kuno chuckled darkly, facing Kagome, Sesshomaru, and Saito again.  He slipped his kanabo off his shoulder, dropping it and letting it fall to the ground with a solid _thud_ of earth being crushed in under its great weight.  He unsheathed his odachi slowly, admiring his own reflection in its gleaming, revealed blade, and InuYasha stepped back to draw Tetsuseiga. 

            “For an oni who can talk so well,” InuYasha sneered, bracing himself for battle as Tetsuseiga entered its massive fighting form in his hand.  “You sure are fucking _stupid_.”

**(Soundtrack: Overkill – Little Bit O’ Murder)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRceK1qq9tw** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRceK1qq9tw)

            Snarling with something approaching pleasure, Kuno turned and leapt across the ground to swing his odachi at InuYasha’s head, a blow which the hanyou warrior blocked easily.  Their swords met in a flash of sparks and InuYasha shoved Kuno’s away to make his own attempt to decapitate his opponent.  With surprising agility for his size, Kuno ducked and rolled to avoid Tetsuseiga’s blade, leveling his odachi with the ground and closing back in on InuYasha to make a piercing thrust from the side.  InuYasha leapt over Kuno’s odachi, his momentum taking him directly over the oni’s head and allowing him to plant both feet into his back in a vicious, full-body kick that sent him tumbling.

            Kuno hit the ground face-first, and InuYasha followed up by leaping as high as he could and bringing Tetsuseiga overhead, aiming to split the oni right down the middle.  Kuno rolled onto his back and crossed Tetsuseiga with his odachi again, working a foot up between his body and InuYasha’s to kick the hanyou off him.  Returning to his feet, Kuno and InuYasha then began to engage each other in a battle of raw attrition, each one’s thrust or slash met by a parry from the other.

            Watching from the sidelines, Kagome turned to Sesshomaru.  “We need to get through this barrier,” she urged to him.  “I’m going to try a reiki blast.  Please, stand back!”

            Wisely, Sesshomaru backed away as Kagome requested, knowing how formidable her demon purifying powers had become.  Saito and his men did the same and Kagome concentrated her reiki into both hands, her energy manifesting as orbs of ghostly-blue light.  Closing her eyes and turning her head to one side, she shoved her reiki orbs into Kuno’s barrier and they diffused into it with twin, synchronized thunderclaps that shook the surrounding forest.  The barrier fluctuated but did not collapse, leading Kagome to try again.

            InuYasha wanted to put an end to his fight with Kuno as quickly as possible, but he knew that within the confines of the oni’s barrier, he couldn’t safely use Tetsuseiga’s most powerful attacks.  Such close quarters meant that unleashing the Kaze no Kizu would be almost suicidal, and the Kongosoha would be difficult to aim.  However, he felt if the opening presented itself, he could surprise Kuno with his _Sankon Tessou_ , Claws of Steel, and use his youki-charged claws to try and turn the oni into bloody fillets.

            Kuno locked swords with InuYasha to test his own strength against the hanyou’s, finding the two of them fairly well-matched.  Their bare feet dug into the earth, slipping back and away from each other slightly as they increased the force they applied to their swords, steel grinding on steel all the while.  “You’re _tough,_ hanyou,” Kuno complimented to InuYasha with a grin.  “Tougher than anyone I’ve ever fought.  Much tougher than any chickenshit daimyo wannabe like Saito.”

            InuYasha managed a grin of his own, exposing his elongated upper incisors.  “If you think _I’m_ tough, just wait until my brother gets in on this,” he said to Kuno.  Behind him, InuYasha could hear Kagome trying to blast through the oni warrior’s barrier.  “My mate will have your barrier down soon.  When she does, you’ll have all of us to deal with.  Give up now and we’ll let you live!”

            “ _Never_ ,” Kuno swore.  “Bring on your brother _and_ your miko bitch!”

            “Have it your way,” InuYasha replied, abruptly pulling back so that his resistance to Kuno’s sword ceased all at once and causing the oni to stumble forward.  “ _Sankon Tessou!_ ”  InuYasha moved his left hand from Tetsuseiga’s grip as his claws began to glow.  Dipping his hand low and contorting his fingers rigidly, he brought his claws upward violently as tendrils of his youki began to flow out of them, raking them over Kuno’s flesh to leave five deep slices in him, from hip to opposite shoulder.  Kuno roared in pain and InuYasha capitalized upon his break in concentration to level Tetsuseiga with the ground and run him through, right under his ribs.

            Kuno’s strength seemed to leave him as he fell silent with a bloody gurgle and sank to his knees before InuYasha, his arms falling limply to his side and his odachi falling out of his hand.  “I fucking _told_ you you’d regret it,” InuYasha cursed to him.

            An evil smile spread across Kuno’s green face, his ink-black eyes widening with borderline psychotic glee.  “I don’t have _anything_ to regret,” he boasted defiantly.  Coughing up dark red oni blood, he grasped the edges of Tetsuseiga’s wide blade with both hands to _turn_ it ninety degrees inside his abdomen, spreading his wound to grotesque dimensions to maximize the tissue and organ damage.  He seemed to relish in the flood of pain it caused.  “But _you’ve_ …got… _PLENTY!”_

Kuno’s body gave off a tangible pulse of demonic energy, one that seized the full attention of InuYasha, Kagome, and even Sesshomaru.  Placing a foot onto one of Kuno’s shoulders, InuYasha yanked his blood-covered Tetsuseiga out of the oni’s stomach and leapt backward as far as he could, given the limited space inside the surrounding barrier.  Kuno slumped forward onto the ground, doubling over as his body twisted and contorted in convulsive fashion.  His muscles swelled beneath his olive green skin, bulging out as if growing suddenly as his skeleton creaked and popped, changing size and shape to match his musculature.

            “He’s _transforming_ …” Sesshomaru observed.  The aura of demonic energy flowing off of Kuno was especially worrying.  He looked to Kagome and what he said next was a direct order.  “Break through this barrier _now!_ ”

            Frantically, Kagome immediately resumed her attempt to penetrate Kuno’s amber energy barrier.  By this time, after just a few seconds, Kuno’s body had doubled in physical size and _tripled_ in mass.  The rope binding the animal furs he wore around his waist grew taut and broke, unable to encompass its wearer’s girth.  The furs fell away to reveal that he wore a thigh length, male-pattern undergarment made of black-dyed animal intestine, one that could stretch out to cope with the stress of such extreme, sudden body growth.  Evidently, he had fully anticipated such an event and dressed himself accordingly.

            No longer convulsing, Kuno looked up at InuYasha, then rose from his prostrate position to reach a height of nearly _fifteen feet,_ weighing at least two thousand pounds, a full long ton.  The hideous wound left in his stomach by Tetsuseiga healed up for InuYasha to see and he crouched low, clenching his massive fists and puffing out his even more massive chest to _roar_ long and loud, directly at the hanyou warrior just in front of him.

            InuYasha felt his teeth rattling inside their gums by the sonic power of the now-hulking Kuno’s roar.  “Kagome, Sesshomaru…” he began, breathing deeply.  “ _Help!_ ”

            Kuno lunged forward at InuYasha with an outstretched fist and the silver-haired hanyou dove out of his way with very little time to spare; the oni hulk was big and _fast_.  Kuno’s fist missed InuYasha’s head and met the energy barrier behind him, very near to where Kagome was working to penetrate it.  The shock that transferred into the ground directly beneath threw the miko completely off her feet, leading Sesshomaru to move and catch her.

            “Oh, God,” Kagome whispered to Sesshomaru in horror, watching as Kuno turned ponderously to stoop down to the ground and pick up his kanabo, now possessing the size and strength to use it as intended.  “He’s so _strong._   InuYasha will be _killed!_ ”

            Sesshomaru set Kagome onto her feet and forcefully pushed her back away from the barrier.  He turned his head to address her, Saito, and the village lord’s men all at once.  “Take cover,” he ordered tersely, reaching across his waist to draw Bakusaiga from it sheath.

            Kagome, Saito, and Saito’s men scrambled away at the sight of Sesshomaru about to make use of Bakusaiga, the _Explosive Crushing Fang_.  Satisfied that they had reached a safe distance, the inu daiyoukai raised the super-sword above his head and swiped it downward at Kuno’s barrier, casting forth a searing green wave of the tremendous youki stored within it.  He measured the amount carefully: too little, and the barrier would remain standing.  Too much, and InuYasha might be killed along with Kuno himself.  The wave collided with the barrier with a great flash of light and a blast of heat and wind that shook the surround forest, but once again, the barrier remained.

            Hefting his kanabo with deadly intent, Kuno felt his barrier come especially close to breaking and glanced over a shoulder at Sesshomaru himself, then at the sword he held in hand.  “Wait your turn, daiyoukai,” he chided, his voice now deep and bestial by his transformation’s effect on his vocal cords.

            Returning his attention to InuYasha, Kuno raised his kanabo overhead and slammed it down, aiming to crush the hanyou warrior into paste.  InuYasha dodged horizontally and the giant club smashed a crater into the earth where he had been standing.  Kuno then moved his club in the horizontal plane to match, seeking to plow him over instead.  InuYasha hardly let these attempts on his life go unanswered, seizing every opportunity to counterattack.

            InuYasha weaved himself around the movements of Kuno’s club, using Tetsuseiga to slash at the oni’s trunk-like legs and calves.  Each cut he made into Kuno’s flesh earned him a roar of pain, but as with the horrible wound he’d made in his stomach just a minute or so earlier, they healed before they could even _bleed_.  ‘ _Fuck it_ ,’ InuYasha thought to himself, considering his dire situation.  ‘ _I’ve got to do it!_ ’

            Putting his back to the barrier to put as much distance between himself and Kuno as he could, InuYasha raised Tetsuseiga above his head and scythed it downward hard.  “ _Kaze no Kizu!_ ”  Four talons of demon-destroying light erupted from Tetsuseiga’s blade, shooting across the ground and raking over Kuno’s hulking body, engulfing it completely.  At the same time, InuYasha extracted Tetsuseiga’s black scabbard from underneath the sash holding it to his hip and he held it out in front of him. 

            As InuYasha expected, Kuno’s barrier took some of the energy from his Wound of the Wind and threw it back right into his face.  He squeezed his golden eyes shut and tucked his head into his chest as it washed over him.  His scabbard protected him, forming a teardrop-shaped void around his body that the Wound’s destructive light could not enter.  A seeming firestorm raged around him for several long seconds, broken suddenly when a huge green arm reached out of it demonic flames and seized him by his throat.

            The Wound of the Wind dissipated to reveal Kuno standing unharmed, lifting InuYasha high off his feet, tightening his thick green fingers around his neck and threatening to break it like the soft wooden twig it was to him.  Rather than kill him right away, Kuno decided to play with him a bit, raising him up and slamming him down into the ground as if he was a child’s toy.  Releasing his neck, Kuno took the hanyou warrior by an ankle and flung him overhead into the ground on one side, then to the other, over and over until series of vaguely InuYasha-shaped craters surrounded him.  Losing his grip on Tetsuseiga, InuYasha could do nothing but cry out and take the punishment, distantly hearing Kagome screaming to him and catching glimpses of Sesshomaru trying to slash his way through Kuno’s barrier.

            InuYasha’s body grew limp as the pain overwhelmed his consciousness.  Finally, Kuno stopped and held him up by his ankle, upside down with his ivory mane dangling from his head to examine his bruised, bloodied face.  “Still alive, are you?” Kuno asked, growing thoughtful.  “I thought your brains would be scrambled by now, for sure.”

            Kuno dropped his kanabo and turned InuYasha right side up to hold him around the arms with both hands.  The hanyou warrior’s head hung to one side and the oni hulk shook him to keep him awake.  “You _are_ tough,” he said with twisted praise.  “And you’re just a half-demon.  I bet your father was something to see.  How would you like to be like me?”

            InuYasha shook his head to clear his senses.  His brain sure _felt_ scrambled, but still, he could understand what the oni hulk was saying.  “Like _you?_ ”

            “Sure,” Kuno smiled.  “Let me show you how oni…make _other_ oni.”

            Kuno opened his mouth wide and his upper incisors began to extend, becoming as long, snake-like _fangs_.  Each fang began to ooze a thick, creamy green fluid, dripping heavily onto Kuno’s lower lip.  InuYasha’s golden eyes widened: Kuno was about to _convert_ him into an oni like himself.  Even in his weakened state, he began to struggle in Kuno’s grip, kicking wildly against the oni’s huge midsection, but Kuno merely laughed, hardly feeling the hanyou’s feet connecting with his muscle-filled hide.

            Sesshomaru and Kagome both saw exactly what was happening and Kagome joined in trying to break down Kuno’s barrier.  “ _No!_ ” she cried out to Kuno, begging him to stop.  “Please don’t do it!”

            “For an oni, you’re going to be fucking _beautiful_ ,” Kuno whispered to InuYasha, squeezing him a little tighter to end his struggling as he lowered his big, fanged mouth to one of InuYasha’s shoulders, right where his shoulder met his neck, and bit down.

            Kuno’s fangs punched clean through red Fire-Rat cloth and the white silk of the kosode underneath to reach deep into InuYasha’s body.  The glands at their roots contracted powerfully and their venom _exploded_ out into the hanyou warrior’s bloodstream, quickly travelling to his pounding heart and from there, driven directly up into his brain.  InuYasha then gave up a cry that Kagome knew would haunt her for the rest of her life.  Even Sesshomaru winced at the sounds coming out of his brother.  Inside InuYasha’s body, Kuno’s venom saturated every tissue and organ it could reach, beginning to modify them at the cellular and _genetic_ level.

            InuYasha’s struggling ceased, replaced with soundless, wide-eyed convulsions, and Kuno extracted his fangs from him to carefully lay him onto the ground and let his venom do its work.  He picked up his kanabo again and turned to face Kagome and Sesshomaru as they stood outside his barrier.  They had stopped trying to break through, fully expecting him to lower it on his own.  Placing himself directly between them and InuYasha, he stepped forward menacingly, his massive feet plodding across the ground with a slow, rhythmic _crump, crump_ and the end of his kanabo dragging across the ground.  He spoke to Kagome, Sesshomaru, and Saito all together.  “Now, it’s _your_ turn!”

            Her beautiful blue eyes narrowing vindictively, Kagome slipped her longbow off of her back and loaded two arrows from her quiver, drawing her bowstring back and turning her bow parallel to the ground, ‘assault’ style.  She hunched over slightly, preparing for a sprint.  “Sesshomaru, handle Kuno,” she instructed with thinly-suppressed anger.  “I’ll go to InuYasha.”

            ‘Hn,’ was Sesshomaru’s reply as he studied Kuno’s body for weak points, giving Bakusaiga an aggressive twirl of his wrist.

            Kuno pressed a thumb into one of the jewels embedded into his club’s handle and his amber energy barrier dissipated suddenly.  Now, there was nothing separating him from Kagome or Sesshomaru.  He stepped forward aggressively, raising his club high as he began to boast: “Bring it on, you bit-“

            Kagome didn’t let Kuno finish as she stormed into the clearing and released both of her reiki-charged arrows directly into the oni hulk’s face.  They shot forward as miniature, lightning-fast comets and deviated from one another by a few degrees, one of them blasting clean through one side of Kuno’s clavicle, the other searing one side of his face to the bone.  Howling with rage and pain, he toppled over backward, covering his half-melted face with a hand as if to protect it.

            Sesshomaru made his move now, rushing forward to hop on top of Kuno’s huge chest and drive Bakusaiga down into his throat, nailing his neck into the ground.  Kuno gurgled blood for a moment but did not die, his amplified healing factor allowing his pierced throat to heal _around_ Sesshomaru’s sword.  Enraged, he swatted Sesshomaru off of him and into the trees, only to be swarmed by Saito and his soldiers as they poured out of the treeline, using their swords and polearms to slash and stab his prone body by the dozen.

            While Kuno was distracted, Kagome rushed to InuYasha’s side, her blood curdling by the hideous puncture marks she found in his shoulder.  Even then, they oozed excess oni venom, a gloppy green mess of the oni’s vile fluid and InuYasha’s blood.  The hanyou warrior’s body twitched and convulsed involuntarily and Kagome could see the whites of his eyes flashing bright, demonic red.  She could only wonder: what was he about to transform into?  An oni like Kuno, or his own _full demon_?

**(Soundtrack: Diamond Head – Am I Evil?)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVid_fLzN5g** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVid_fLzN5g)

            “Ka…Ka-go- _me_ ,” InuYasha rasped, staring wide-eyed at the sky but not really seeing, his voice distorted by pain and by the rise of his inner demon.  It rose up to fight the effect of Kuno’s venom, mobilizing his blood’s every antibody in the most forceful manner: demonic transformation.  “Away.  Get _away!_ ”

            Indeed, Kagome thought to move herself away from InuYasha as he ordered.  She saw Tetsuseiga sticking out of the ground several yards away, nowhere near enough to restrain her hanyou lover’s inner demon.  If InuYasha’s inner demon really was about to break loose, it wouldn’t be for fun, like the night before at Kotobukiya’s inn.  Still, Kagome resolved to stay by his side, as he was vulnerable and Kuno was still very much alive.

            Snarling, Kuno sat up and smacked Saito and his men away from him as if ridding himself of a swarm of bothersome insects, taking to his feet again.  He removed his hand from his face carefully, webs of steaming, melted flesh connecting his palm to his head.  Unlike the other injuries he had sustained so far, this one _wasn’t_ healing, his healing ability thwarted by the shock of Kagome’s reiki.  The cosmetic effect of it was permanent and thoroughly unpleasant.  “My face,” Kuno whispered in horror as what remained of one whole side of his face stared at him backwards from his palm.  “My fucking _face!_   You fucking miko _bitch!_ ”

            Kagome turned to face Kuno again and as he stomped toward her, she loaded another arrow into her bow, charging it with especially lethal amount of her reiki.  She drew it back against her bowstring and aimed for Kuno’s head.  This gave the oni pause and immediately made him rethink his advance.  “Keep back, or I’ll even your complexion out,” Kagome warned to him.

            Behind Kagome, InuYasha writhed upon the ground, fast losing himself to his inner demon, ironically as his inner demon sought to protect him from Kuno’s venom.  “Say goodbye to your pet puppy,” Kuno mocked, relishing in the pain he knew InuYasha was feeling at that moment.  “He’s about to _transform_.”

            Kagome felt InuYasha’s youki give a harsh pulse, crashing against her own spiritual aura as a massive ocean wave reaching shore.  He was teetering right on the brink and she looked Kuno in his remaining eye.  “Yes, he _is_ ,” she agreed, turning directly away from Kuno and beginning to _run_.

            Seeming to suddenly conquer his venom-induced pain, InuYasha rolled onto his stomach and vaulted his lower body up to crouch on all fours like the dog he was.  His whole body seemed to shake and vibrate as if on the verge of _exploding_.  His head hung low, his long, ivory bangs obscuring his eyes from Kuno’s view.  “Hey, what’s the matter with _you?_ ” Kuno asked.

            InuYasha lifted his head to Kuno and allowed him to see his eyes.  Their whites had flooded over completely blood-red, their golden irises turned luminescent green.  Daggerlike magenta stripes crept across his cheeks and as he raised himself to his feet, his demonic aura erupted in earnest, exploding to drench the clearing in front on Kuno’s cave in bloody red light.  InuYasha matched his aura with a roar to the sky, a strangled and primal cry of raw, demonic strength.  The portion of his pack waiting in the village down the mountain _felt_ his aura first, then _heard_ him a few seconds later when his terrifying sound reached their ears.

            “What…what the fuck _are_ you?” Kuno cried out.  How could a mere half-demon have this kind of _power?_   Swiftly, the hulking oni swung his giant kanabo down up InuYasha, aiming to smash his head in, and the hanyou warrior _caught it_.  Using both clawed hands, he ripped the club clean out of its owner’s grip and effortlessly flipped it end for end to smack him in the chest with it, sending his two-thousand-pound body sailing out of the clearing and into the forest, crashing through tree after tree.  Parts of the forest canopy came toppling to the ground as a result, allowing wide shafts of sunlight to reach the mossy mountain forest floor beneath for the first time in years.

            Dropping Kuno’s club, InuYasha took pursuit of Kuno himself, becoming a red-and-white, youki-fueled blur as he leapt through the swath of destruction that the oni hulk’s heavy body left behind.  Soon, the transformed hanyou warrior reached his prey, finding him draped halfway over a downed tree some fifty yards away.  Leaping atop him, InuYasha grasped one of his big white horns to turn to head and rasp directly into his face.  “You…Kuno.  You take girls,” he began, his voice more warped and bestial than even Kuno’s.  “You attack brother.  You attack _mate_.  Me smash.  Me _KILL!”_

            Still grasping Kuno’s horn, InuYasha began to pound the oni hulk’s half-melted face in with his free hand, beating him so hard that his horn snapped out of its root from the strain.  Tossing the broken horn aside, InuYasha contented himself with fisting his hand in Kuno’s coarse black hair to reestablish his hold, continuing his beating all the while.  After taking several incredibly hard blows directly into his nose, Kuno found the strength to throw InuYasha off him, taking to his feet and charging forward in a crude counterattack, pile-driving the hanyou into a heavy oak.

            Kuno raised a giant green fist to return the favor to InuYasha when what looked like a whip made purely out of bright green, visible light wrapped around the oni’s wrist from behind and snared tight.  Sesshomaru reintroduced himself to the battle, having returned from the place in the forest where Kuno had flung him before.  The silver-haired daiyoukai pulled hard on his youki whip and yanked Kuno back off of his feet, using his demonic super-speed to streak along the forest floor, then jump up and connect the soles of both boots with the oni’s face in a magnificent, full-body flying kick.

            Sesshomaru’s kick sent Kuno hurtling away from InuYasha and the daiyoukai followed up with a swipe from Bakusaiga, immolating the oni hulk and a half-acre of forest around him with a small, yet devastating demonic nuclear blast.  Sesshomaru turned and bent down to pry InuYasha out of the tree trunk Kuno had crushed him into.  Setting his brother onto his feet, he asked: “Just so we’re clear, you’re not going to attack _me_ , are you?”

            InuYasha sneered and reacquired Kuno as his target.  Like some kind of green stone monolith thrust into the sky by tectonic action, the hulking oni rose from the smoldering ashes of the destroyed forest around him, the wounds that Bakusaiga caused him healing over.  “ _Keh_ ,” InuYasha scoffed.“Brother shut up.  Brother and me fight _oni!_ ”

            Together, InuYasha and Sesshomaru charged at Kuno, seeking to end him with their combined strength.  Kuno was fast in a straight line over a long distance, but his size and weight limited his agility up close, and the inu brothers took full advantage.  InuYasha went for his legs, slashing away with his youki-charged claws, while Sesshomaru used his youki whip to snap and crack ruthlessly at the oni’s upper half, the whip lacerating him all the way down to the bone with each blow.

            Little by little, Kuno’s strength whittled away under the inu brothers’ assault, and Sesshomaru seized upon an almost-drunken stumble of his to move behind him and wrap his youki whip around his throat.  He manipulated a length of it in each hand and pulled it taut to use it as the ultimate garrote.  A vicious death struggle ensued, with Sesshomaru clinging to Kuno’s back, strangling him from behind, and Kuno slamming himself back onto the ground, using his ton-plus weight to try and crush the daiyoukai beneath him.

            Sesshomaru’s youki whip/garrote dug deep into Kuno’s throat, crushing his trachea closed and doing the same to his carotid artery.  The oni hulk thrashed wildly upon the ground, his breaths as silent gurgles.  He beat Sesshomaru down into the ground to try and escape him, but the inu daiyoukai was far too strong are far too tolerant of pain.  Sesshomaru’s eyes flashed red and his face began to deform and elongate as he drew from his ‘true’ form to keep up the pressure.  “This is the end for you,” he spoke coolly into one of the oni’s ears.  He then looked to InuYasha as his hanyou brother leapt atop Kuno’s chest again.  “Finish it.”

            InuYasha plunged his hands into Kuno’s massive, heaving chest, piercing the oni’s diamond-hard muscles to work his hands under his ribs and up into his chest cavity.  He reached up between his rapidly inflating, deflating lungs to rip open his pericardium and take hold of his beating heart.  Given Kuno’s size, the oni hulk’s heart was the size of InuYasha’s _head._

InuYasha satisfied his intense demonic bloodlust by savoring the sensation of Kuno’s heart beating between his hands.  Each heartbeat was incredibly powerful, a harsh, explosive _ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP_ that forcefully pushed InuYasha’s hands away.  _Gallons_ of hot, rich oni blood had to be pumping through its chambers at that moment.  Kuno’s pure black eyes widened as the oni felt death approach him.  He cried out: “No… _NO!_ ”  These proved to be his last words, and they came a little more than a whisper as InuYasha clapped his hands together, crushing Kuno’s heart with a sickening, gushing _pop_.

            Grotesque amounts of blood poured out of the hole in Kuno’s chest that InuYasha had shoved his hands through, pouring over his arms and soaking his already red clothing. Sesshomaru added his own touch to the horrifying, yet well-deserved coup de gras by energizing his youki garrote to snip Kuno’s head right off.  Soon, the oni hulk’s final death throes passed and his headless body stilled.  He was dead.

            Breathing deeply and relaxing beneath Kuno’s dead body, Sesshomaru closed his eyes to bask in the warmth of the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy above.  “Heal from _that_ ,” he bid to the departed oni.

            Kuno’s body and head began to shrink back down to their normal size, shedding mass as large amounts of dissipating heat.  Sesshomaru held the oni’s severed head up in a hand, watching the process with vague interest.  For his own part, InuYasha stumbled backward off of Kuno’s heartless, headless corpse, still consumed by his inner demon but keeping it under control by sheer force of will.

            InuYasha summoned the presence of mind to speak again.  “S… _Seiga_ ,” he uttered to Sesshomaru, sitting on his haunches like an obedient dog.  “Give ‘Seiga.  Make demon quiet.”

            Keeping a close eye on InuYasha in case he suddenly lost his mind and decided to attack, Sesshomaru extricated himself from between the ground and Kuno’s now ‘normal-sized’ body.  Having observed the final moments of InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s battle with Kuno, Kagome came running from her position of safety, stopping to awe at the blood-soaked, Bakusaiga-scarred warzone that had once been peaceful mountain forest.

            “Come no closer,” Sesshomaru warned to Kagome.  “InuYasha needs his sword.  Retrieve it.”

            Feeling the youki pouring off of InuYasha’s body, Kagome understood immediately and turned to return to the clearing in front of the late Kuno’s den.  There, she found Tetsuseiga sticking out of the ground, still in its battle state.  As she drew near to it, it shrank to its ordinary katana size automatically, as if sensing her human nature and making accommodation to her to allow her to carry it.  Extracting it from the ground and picking up its scabbard as it lay nearby, she rushed back to InuYasha’s side in the forest, wary of his transformed state as she offered him his sword and scabbard.

            Gratefully, InuYasha lay a hand on Tetsuseiga’s hilt and the effect was as if an electric current running through his body suddenly discontinued, his demonic aura immediately calming down.  His eyes returned to their ordinary white and golden color and the stripes on his cheeks disappeared.  Closing his eyes, he collapsed into Kagome’s arms and in catching him, the miko from the future was utterly unconcerned by all the blood that had soaked his clothes, blood that could potentially soak into her own.  Her main concern was his health.

            InuYasha still bore the punctures of Kuno’s fangs, each wound still seeping with the oni’s venom.  For her own part, Kagome had no idea what the effect it would have on him now.  “Sesshomaru, Kuno’s venom is still in InuYasha’s blood,” she said.  “What do we _do?_ ”

            At this point, Saito and his men waited in the forest nearby, having observed InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s fight with the hulked-out Kuno at a safe distance.  They had made a brave, though foolhardy attempt to kill Kuno with their swords and spears, and after the oni had swatted them away like so many insects, they wisely refrained from rejoining the battle.  Seeing that InuYasha and Sesshomaru had won, Saito took a small group of his men and entered Kuno’s cave, finding his daughters terribly frightened by the experience of their kidnapping and Kuno’s brutish behavior, but otherwise unharmed.  Freeing the young women from their chains, Saito escorted them out of the cave, then made his way to Kagome and Sesshomaru as they tended to InuYasha.

            “Kagome-sama, Sesshomaru-sama,” Saito addressed with utmost respect, removing his red samurai helmet and kneeling before the miko and the daiyoukai.  “My daughters are safe.  We could not have rescued them without your help.  My wife will be overjoyed – she and I are forever in your debt.”  Looking at InuYasha and recognizing his envenomated state, he continued: “I saw what Kuno did to InuYasha-sama.  What can I do to help?”

            “We need a healer,” Sesshomaru said, slipping Bakusaiga back into its sheath at his hip.  He knelt beside InuYasha and removed him from Kagome’s arms, taking him into his own and standing back up so as to carry him.  Between himself and Kagome, only he could carry InuYasha’s roughly six-foot, two-hundred pound frame a significant distance.  “Moreover, we need someone well-versed in treating envenomation.”

            “My village has such a healer, the best around,” Saito replied proudly.  “His services shall be entirely yours until InuYasha-sama is well again.”

            Then, Kagome, Sesshomaru, and Saito heard Shippo’s voice calling out from somewhere down the forested mountain slope.  “ _InuYasha?  Kagome?_ ” the kitsune shouted.  “ _Sesshomaru?_ ”  Shippo and the others waiting in Saito’s village had felt and heard the fighting going on up the mountain; they had especially felt InuYasha’s demonic transformation.  Therefore, Shippo had volunteered to investigate and report back.

            “Shippo!  Over here!” Kagome responded, knowing that as a fox demon, Shippo could hear well enough to zero in on her by a single response alone.

            Shippo moved quickly through the sloped forest to reach Kagome, Sesshomaru, InuYasha, and Saito, stumbling upon the bloody scene of the oni Kuno’s last moments.  “ _Kami_ ,” he whispered, disbelieving the carnage and devastation he saw before him.  He then noticed Sesshomaru holding an unconscious InuYasha and rushed to them.  “We felt InuYasha go full demon.  What _happened_ here?”

            Kagome pointed to Kuno’s lifeless, headless body as it lay near what had been ground zero Sesshomaru’s last Bakusaiga blast.  “ _He_ happened,” she said to Shippo.  “We’ll explain later.  Right now, InuYasha needs our help!”

            “I will fly InuYasha down to the village and take him to the healer,” Sesshomaru declared.  “Saito, I will need you to direct me to him.  You shall fly with me, as well.”

            “Of course, my lord,” Saito agreed, though he was unsure of the means by which he and Sesshomaru would ‘fly.’  However, it was clear to him that if Sesshomaru had the ability to go toe-to-toe with a beast like Kuno and _win_ , then for him to be able to fly in some way was probably well within the realm of possibility.  Saito’s daughters, Yume and Jun, stood nearby, leading the village lord to ask: “But what of my daughters?  My men can find their way back on foot, but the terrain between here and there is irregular, and Yume and Jun have only their sandals, not a soldier’s boots.”

            “Your daughters and I can fly on Shippo’s back,” Kagome offered to Saito.  “We’ll go straight to your house while you show Sesshomaru and InuYasha to the healer.”

            Dutifully, Shippo summoned his kitsune magic and transformed into giant Fire-Fox form, crouching low to the ground in order to allow Kagome, Yume, and Jun to climb atop him more easily.  Satisfied with this arrangement, Saito thanked Kagome, then turned to his daughters.  “Yume, Jun, your mother will be very happy to see you.  I’ll be home as soon as I can.  Now, go with Kagome-sama here.”

            “Yes, Father,” Saito’s daughters obeyed, hesitantly climbing onto Shippo’s back – after all, it was only their second encounter with a demon of any kind, the first being with Kuno.

            Kagome climbed onto Shippo to sit behind Jun as she sat behind Yume.  “Okay, Shippo, let’s go!” she ordered.

            Shippo manipulated his demonic energy to rise into the air and weave his way through the forest canopy above him, entering fast, level flight to take himself and his passengers back down to Saito’s village.  Saito ordered his men to return to the village as well, then looked to Sesshomaru.  “I’m ready.  How shall we do this?”

            Cradling InuYasha in his arms, Sesshomaru summoned his own demonic energy about him and looked down to Saito.  “Take my arm,” he instructed.

            Saito reached out and touched a hand to Sesshomaru’s upper right arm as the daiyoukai said and he gave a shout of surprise as a brilliant white light surrounded him, light that emanated from Sesshomaru himself.  By his demonic power, Sesshomaru’s form and the forms of InuYasha and Saito all dissolved into a glowing sphere that shot up through the forest canopy and followed Shippo down to the village at the foot of the mountain, leaving Saito’s men behind standing in a state of complete disbelief at the magic that had just taken place.

 

**-To be continued-**


	15. Hanyou Ascension - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sesshomaru transports InuYasha back to the village of Hideki Saito in the hope that the healer there can treat the hanyou warrior’s envenomation by the oni Kuno’s fangs. The healer proves unable to deal with such powerful, exotic venom, and the flea demon Myoga arrives to provide his unique, blood-sucking assistance.

 

  **(Soundtrack: Avantasia – Dying for an Angel)**

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd98tDYlPOk>

After killing the oni Kuno with InuYasha’s help, Sesshomaru flew himself, InuYasha, and the village lord Hideki Saito away from the mountain cave in which Kuno had made his den, returning to Saito’s village at the foot of the forested mountain.  During the fighting, Kuno had bitten InuYasha and infused him with his oni venom, for the purpose of transforming the hanyou warrior into a monstrous oni like himself.  Instead of becoming an oni out of hand, after being separated from Tetsuseiga, InuYasha’s body entered its full demon form, allowing InuYasha to resist Kuno’s venom and giving him enough power to fight the oni hulk openly without his sword.  Now, InuYasha and Tetsuseiga were reunited, and with InuYasha’s demon blood sealed, Kuno’s venom was once again free to work its effect.  The result: InuYasha would either become oni or he would _die._

            For InuYasha’s sake, time was of the essence, so Sesshomaru used his daiyoukai magic to transform himself, InuYasha, and Saito into a levitating sphere of bright, glowing light.  Able to fly in such a form, they covered the two or three miles of mountain forest between Kuno’s den and Saito’s village in around fifteen seconds.  This translated to a flight speed of more than 500 miles per hour.  Ahead of them, Shippo flew toward Saito’s village in his Fire-Fox form, carrying Kagome on his back as well as Yume and Jun, Saito’s twin daughters whom Kagome, Sesshomaru, and InuYasha had rescued from Kuno.

            Shippo flew much more slowly than Sesshomaru, in consideration for his passengers’ safety, and so Sesshomaru reached Saito’s village first, giving Shippo a wide berth of a couple hundred yards so as not to zip right by him and frighten him or the women on his back.  In perfect control of his speed and direction, the transformed daiyoukai guided himself down to the main street of Saito’s village and decelerated from a speed of 500+ miles per hour to a complete stop in the space of less than a second.  The resulting G-force would have been instantly, gruesomely fatal had Sesshomaru not morphed his body and the bodies of InuYasha and Saito into a single mass of demonic energy that did not conform to the laws of ordinary physics.

            The sight of Sesshomaru in his glowing sphere form, hurtling toward them at such high speed, gave the villagers in the streets below quite a fright, sending many of them diving for cover behind whatever reasonably solid objects they could find.  Upon touching down to the ground, Sesshomaru reverted himself and his passengers to ordinary corporeal form.  The moment he did so, Saito stumbled away from him and fell to his knees in the dirt, fully emptying the contents of his stomach out his mouth with a long retch and several rasping breaths. 

            InuYasha shook and trembled, groaning in Sesshomaru’s arms, simultaneously dealing with the pain of Kuno’s venom in his blood and the sensation of his own stomach nearly turning inside out.  Sesshomaru realized his mistake immediately, having not considered the effect that ‘glowing sphere travel’ would have on anyone but himself.  “I…apologize for your discomfort,” he said to Saito and InuYasha at once, though InuYasha was less than fully conscious and perhaps unable to hear.  “I should have warned you to how I intended to transport us.”

            “Oh…that, that is quite all right,” Saito forgave Sesshomaru immediately, coughing hard to clear his throat and wiping his mouth on one of the vambraces of his red armor.  Standing up, he looked at Sesshomaru directly.  “The healer, I will take you to him now.  Please, follow me.”

            A few minutes later, Shippo reached the skies over Saito’s village.  Since all the various houses and other buildings in it looked generally alike from above, the fox demon identified Saito’s by the unmistakable figures of Ah-Un and Jaken waiting outside in front of it.  He descended gently and landed near Sesshomaru’s two-headed dragon and imp-like vassal, then crouched to let Kagome, Yume, and Jun dismount.  Saito’s twin daughters hurried inside the house and from their place outside, Shippo and Kagome immediately heard the cries of joyful reunion: Keiko’s joy at seeing her daughters again and Yume and Jun’s joy of returning home to their mother alive.  Shippo reverted to his humanoid form and followed Kagome inside, greeted by the other members of InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s respective packs.

            “ _Kagome!_ ” Miroku exclaimed, approaching the miko from the future along with the others.  “You’re _safe!_   We heard the fighting from here.  We heard…and _felt_ InuYasha go full demon, so we sent Shippo to find out what was going on.  Please, tell us what happened.”

            “The oni that attacked this village, his name is…or _was_ Kuno,” Kagome explained, correcting herself mid-sentence to account for Kuno’s recent, grisly end.  “We arrived in time.  Sesshomaru and InuYasha killed Kuno before he could do anything more to Yume or Jun, Saito and Keiko’s daughters here.  But…something’s _happened_ to InuYasha.  Kuno _bit_ him.”

            Sango’s expression, generally pleased from seeing Saito and Keiko’s daughters returned to their home safely, sobered abruptly.  Given her education in the study of the various species of demon that inhabited 16th-century Japan, she immediately recognized the significance and the _danger_ of an oni’s bite.  InuYasha would either die, or become the same kind of beast that had bitten him.  “Oh, no…oh, _no!_ ” she hushed.  “Where is InuYasha _now?_ ”

            “Sesshomaru and Saito are taking him to the village’s healer,” Kagome said to Sango.  “Come on, let’s go find them!”

            Kagome turned and left Saito’s house as quickly as she had arrived, the rest of the pack moving to follow.  At this point, Keiko, Yume, and Jun had been locked in conversation with one another; Yume and Jun were describing their terrifying ordeal being in Kuno’s captivity when Keiko noticed Kagome and the others all leaving at once.  Looking among them, she realized that while her daughters had returned, her husband, Sesshomaru, and InuYasha, Sesshomaru and InuYasha being the two perhaps most directly responsible for her daughters’ rescue, had _not_.  Beginning to worry again, Keiko hushed her daughters with a polite, yet firm wave of a hand and followed after Kagome and her friends.  “Kagome-sama?” she called, stepping out the front door of her house and into the street.  “Where are you going?”

            In her hurry, Kagome was already out of earshot by this point, so Shizu stopped and turned around in order to speak to Keiko.  “It sounds like InuYasha’s been hurt somehow,” she explained.  “I’m not sure what’s going on, exactly.  Maybe we should all go together?”

            “Yes, good idea,” Keiko agreed with Shiori’s mother.  “Yume, Jun!  Come with me, please!”

            The village healer’s house sat about a hundred yards down the village’s central street from Saito and Keiko’s house.  With Sesshomaru carrying InuYasha, he and Saito reached it some minutes before Shippo arrived with Kagome, Yume, and Jun riding on his Fire-Fox back.  Inside, the village healer, an older, grey-haired gentleman perhaps 60 years of age, tended to several people who had been injured when Kuno attacked the village earlier in the day.  Saito entered the house and his ornately-armored form immediately caught the attention of everyone inside.

            “Saito-sama!” the healer greeted with a relieved smile as he finished tying a bandage over the arm of a teenage boy who had suffered a burn from one of the various fires that Kuno had set during his attack.  Once he finished bandaging the boy, he stood up and approached Saito to make his respect to his village lord directly.  “You’ve returned!  Thank _God_.  I take it you were successful?  How are your girls?”

            “Hello, Keiji,” Saito greeted back, addressing the village healer by given name.  “My girls are fine, thank you.  But there isn’t time to talk.  Right now, I have…an _unusual_ patient for you.”  The village lord looked over a shoulder and stepped out of the doorway, gesturing for Sesshomaru to bring InuYasha into the healer’s house.  As Sesshomaru entered, Keiji’s breath and the collective breaths of all his patients left them, and Keiji shrank from him and Saito.

            On his own, Sesshomaru was an intimidating figure, his seven-foot height allowing him to tower over the average human of the region and period.  He was tall enough that he had to duck his head in order to fit through the front door of Keiji’s house and ad hoc hospital.  Further, the immaculate white silk his clothes were cut from, his polished armor cuirass, twin swords, silvery mane, facial markings, and golden eyes told Keiji and his patients that he was not any ordinary demon, but one of nobility and extreme power.

            Keiji then looked to InuYasha as Sesshomaru held him in his arms and noted the hanyou warrior’s similarity in appearance to the exotic demon lord.  They appeared to be youkai of generally the same species, perhaps even related to each other.  “Keiji, this is Lord Sesshomaru and his brother, InuYasha,” Saito said, introducing his village healer to the two silver-haired dog demons beside him.  “They helped me rescue my daughters from the oni.  They killed him _outright_ , and now our village is safe.”

            “ _Goodness_ ,” Keiji hushed, stepping forward to approach Saito again, satisfied that Sesshomaru and InuYasha were not a threat by the fact that it was his own village lord making the introduction.  “I’d heard rumors that a group of demons had come by and actually _volunteered_ to help us.  I would have gone to see for myself, but I’ve been busy all day with the injured here.”

            “The people you have here now,” Saito began, looking among the dozen or so men and women that Keiji had been treating.  “Are they well enough to move?”

            “Yes, I think so,” Keiji replied.  “Fortunately, no one suffered any truly serious injuries today.  I was just finishing up now.”

            “Good,” Saito approved.  “Send everyone home, or if their homes were damaged during the oni’s attack, send them to stay with a friend for the time being.  Starting right now, I want you to give your full attention and the full range of your skills and talents to InuYasha here.”

            “Yes, my lord,” Keiji obeyed.  Quickly, the healer shepherded his patients out of the house, then approached the obviously infirmed InuYasha as Sesshomaru held him and began to make a cursory examination. 

            “He’s been bitten, by the _oni_ ,” Sesshomaru said to Keiji, to set the healer on the right path.  “Look to his right shoulder.”

            Indeed, Keiji found InuYasha’s right shoulder to be hideously perforated by Kuno’s fangs, as Sesshomaru indicated.  “ _Kami_ …what teeth that beast had!” he noted with morbid awe.  Despite all the blood that had soaked into InuYasha’s clothes, a subtle contrast given the Fire-Rat cloth’s red color, Keiji found no other obvious wounds.  He then moved away from Sesshomaru and InuYasha to begin gathering his medicines and supplies most relevant to an envenomation, gesturing to a clean, white futon vacated by one of his recent patients.  “Please, Lord… _Sesshomaru_ , was it?  Lay InuYasha down over there.”

            Kagome and the rest of the pack soon arrived at Keiji’s house.  Without Saito to guide them there, they found their way by Kagome’s extrasensory ability to divine Sesshomaru’s distinctive demonic aura.  Worried for both Sesshomaru and InuYasha at once, Rin ran inside ahead of everyone else, followed by Kagome, Miroku, and Sango.  Keiji’s house was relatively small, so the others decided to stay outside so as not to crowd the interior.

            “ _InuYasha!_ ” Rin cried out as she spotted the hanyou warrior laying upon a futon on the floor as Keiji and Sesshomaru tended to him.  The amount of blood covering his clothes was especially concerning to her, regardless that it was actually _Kuno’s_ blood, not his own.  “Oh, InuYasha, what’s _happened_ to you?”  She went to InuYasha’s side next to Sesshomaru and he opened his eyes to give her a pained smile.

            “Hey, Rin…” InuYasha spoke weakly.  “Had a fight with that oni.  _Ugh…_ he got me pretty _good_ …”

            Kagome, Miroku, and Sango each took special notice of the way Rin acted toward InuYasha.  In Rin, they saw more than just ordinary, friendly concern for InuYasha, but thinly-restrained _terror_ from the thought that he might not survive.  They had to ask themselves: was she _in love_ with him?  Such fear of loss could only stem from love.

            “Lord Sesshomaru?” Keiji asked hesitantly to the daiyoukai across from him, glancing between him and Rin.  “InuYasha’s haori is in the way.  Would you help me remove it?”

            “Very well,” Sesshomaru nodded to Saito’s healer.  He then looked over a shoulder at Rin as she knelt behind him.  “Rin.  Give us some room,” he instructed.

            Kagome stepped forward and bent down to grasp one of Rin’s upper arms, gently pulling the younger woman to her feet and urging her to move away from Sesshomaru and Keiji.  The daiyoukai lord and Saito’s village healer then unfastened InuYasha’s haori and the kosode beneath, easing him into a supported sitting position to slip the bloodstained garments off his shoulders and down his arms.  InuYasha’s blood and Kuno’s venom had clotted into a sticky, red-and-green mess that cemented the hanyou warrior’s haori and kosode to the hideous puncture wounds the oni hulk’s fangs had made in his shoulder.  Despite his stoic nature, Sesshomaru found himself wincing as he peeled the layers of clothing away, slowing tearing the puncture wounds back open and causing InuYasha to give up a groan of pain.

            Sesshomaru lay InuYasha back down and Keiji began to examine his bite wounds.  “There’s still so much venom in these punctures – we need to remove as much as we can,” Keiji said.  He looked to Sesshomaru.  “My lord, this venom is likely toxic to me, regardless of whether I actually ingest it.  A demon of your class must have far greater resistance.  Would you…?”

            Dutifully, Sesshomaru agreed.  While Kagome, Miroku, Sango, Rin, and Saito looked on, the daiyoukai lowered his mouth to the two oozing holes in InuYasha’s shoulder and sealed his lips around one of them, drawing deeply and filling his mouth with a mixture of the inu hanyou’s blood and Kuno’s venom.  He scowled at the taste and Keiji presented a wooden cup to him.  “Here, spit into this.”

            Sesshomaru purged the contents of his mouth into Keiji’s wooden cup, then repeated the process for InuYasha’s other wound, siphoning what venom he could and transferring it to the cup.  Keiji then took the cup to a table along one of his house’s walls, setting it down and opening a series of ceramic bottles to begin combining samples of their contents with samples of the blood/venom mixture, observing the reactions with each. 

            For her own part, with her knowledge of her time’s medicine, Kagome regarded Keiji’s work – apothecarial alchemy – with interest, but skepticism as well.  Having Sesshomaru suck out whatever venom he could was a good start, but she knew that the only real solution to an envenomation of any kind was an _antivenin_.  Unfortunately, she also knew that the only way to make such antivenin was to inject some kind of test animal with the venom to be counteracted, then harvest its blood and isolate the antibodies within.  That required expertise, specialized equipment, and _time_ that they simply didn’t have, so Kagome forced herself to stay quiet and let Keiji do whatever he could.

            Sesshomaru studied Keiji’s work with interest, as well.  “What are you doing?” he asked to the village healer.

            “These bottles contain herbal distillates I’ve made,” Keiji said to Sesshomaru.  “Certain herbs that grow around here have useful anti-venom properties.  Some work well against snake venom, others work well against spider venom.  Unfortunately, this is the first case of _oni_ venom I’ve seen.  I’m testing what I have against it to find out what to use.”

            After a few minutes of experimentation, Keiji settled on one particular herbal mixture of his, dissolving it into clean water for InuYasha to drink.  He transferred a proper amount of it to another wooden cup and, holding the cup carefully, he moved from his work table back to InuYasha’s side.  “Sit him up, please,” Keiji instructed to Sesshomaru.

            Sesshomaru lifted InuYasha’s upper body off the futon with one hand, opening his mouth with the other, and Keiji poured his herbal mixture in.  InuYasha swallowed with some difficulty, as Kuno’s venom was causing him partial paralysis in his throat.  Sesshomaru then lay him back down.  “What now?” the daiyoukai asked.

            “Now, my lord, we _wait_ ,” Keiji answered.  “The effect of this herb is not immediate.  It must first be absorbed into the blood through the digestive tract.  We will need to monitor its effect in the coming hours and administer more, as necessary.”  The village healer looked from Sesshomaru to Kagome, Rin, Miroku, and Sango as they stood nearby.  “In the meantime, I will need more of the herb in order to make more medicine,” he said to them.  “Would you go and get some for me?  It grows in large amounts in the meadows near here, so it will be easy to find.”

            “Yes, certainly,” Kagome affirmed on behalf of herself and her friends.  “What does it look like?”

            Keiji reached for an unground, uncut herb on his work table, an example of the kind he needed for InuYasha.  He offered it to Kagome and she took it from him, studying it closely.  It was leafy green in overall color, except for the distinctive light blue tips of its leaves.  “Yes, this shouldn’t be a problem,” Kagome agreed.  The miko from the future turned to Rin.  “Rin, would you like to help us look?”

            Rin looked at Kagome, then to InuYasha as he lay incapacitated on Keiji’s futon.  She clearly hesitated to leave him, leading Kagome to add: “InuYasha will be fine while we’re gone.  Sesshomaru and Keiji will be here with him.  This is all right with you, isn’t it, Sesshomaru?”

            Sesshomaru nodded his consent, trusting Rin in the company of Kagome, Miroku, and Sango, InuYasha’s friends and, in the case of Kagome and Sango, InuYasha’s _lovers_.  Kagome then led Rin outside, followed by Miroku, Sango, and Saito.  Keiko greeted Saito as he exited Keiji’s house, happy to see her husband unharmed after his mission to rescue their daughters.  Yume and Jun greeted Saito as well, their presence confirming to him that Kagome and Shippo had delivered them home safely.

            Shippo, Shizu, Shiori, and Kirara in her housecat form approached Kagome, Rin, Miroku, and Sango as the latter four stepped outside Keiji’s house.  With Jaken and Ah-Un standing nearby, the entire pack, minus InuYasha and Sesshomaru, was reconvened.  “How is he?” Shippo asked urgently to Kagome, referring to InuYasha.

            A worrisome expression crossed Kagome’s face and she looked back behind her, watching Sesshomaru and Keiji tend to InuYasha through the open doorway of Keiji’s house.  She looked back to Shippo.  “It’s too soon to know, yet,” she said.  “Keiji, the healer here, is giving InuYasha a liquified herb to counteract the oni venom.  Right now, he doesn’t have a lot of the herb on-hand, so we need to go find more.”

            Saito excused himself from his wife and daughters to speak with Kagome and her friends.  “The meadows Keiji spoke of – you’ll find them to the south and east of here, within just a few hundred yards,” he explained.  “Shall I show you to them?”

            “Yes, please,” Kagome agreed.

            Happy to help those who had helped him so dramatically, Saito instructed his wife and daughters to return to their home, then gestured for Kagome and Rin to follow him.  As always, Naraku remained a concern, so Miroku, Sango, and Kirara went along with Kagome to protect her in case the psychotic oni lord attacked.  Jaken and Ah-Un followed for a similar reason – to protect Rin while Sesshomaru was occupied with InuYasha’s care.  At the very least, Kirara and Ah-Un could provide transport for their friends and a rapid means of escape in the event of danger.  Meanwhile, Shippo, Shizu, and Shiori remained near Keiji’s house in order assist InuYasha in whatever way they could.

~~~~

 

            After a few minutes’ walk, Saito led Kagome and the others to a meadow directly south of his village.  Partially-framed by forest, it boasted several species of lovely wildflower, its serene beauty inadvertently reminding Kagome and her friends of the scene of Kagura’s death some years before.  They immediately set to work searching the meadow for the herb they needed for InuYasha.  The grass and flowers were tall and thick enough that the roughly two-foot-tall Jaken would have had great difficulty in moving through it, so he and Ah-Un waited at the meadow’s edge. 

            Kirara perched her tiny feline body on Sango’s shoulder as she and Miroku combed through the flowers, looking for examples of the herb.  Saito searched, as well, some yards away from Miroku and Sango.  Finally, Kagome and Rin searched alongside one another with several more yards of separation from the others.  Somewhat surreptitiously, Kagome led Rin further away until she was certain that they could speak to each other at a practical volume without being overheard.  She saw an opportunity to speak with Rin semi-privately and took it.

            “Rin?” Kagome began, gaining the young woman’s attention as she combed through the meadow’s florae.  Already, she had gathered a sizable bundle of Keiji’s anti-venom herb – if it wasn’t all they needed, it was at least a very good start.  Considering her next words carefully, Kagome decided to go straight for the heart of the matter.  “What’s going on between InuYasha and Sesshomaru?”

            Rin paused visibly, then looked up at Kagome as the two of them knelt in the meadow.  She blushed and smiled nervously.  “Uh…what do you _mean_?”  She then looked back down to resume her search for the anti-venom herb, focusing her attention there as if to somehow escape Kagome’s steady, knowing gaze.

            “You may not know this, but InuYasha and Sesshomaru haven’t always been on the best of terms,” Kagome said.  “The first time I met Sesshomaru, he and InuYasha were trying to kill each other.  InuYasha was the one that took off his arm.  Back then, Sesshomaru basically tried to kill _me_ , too.  Not in a ‘you are my sworn enemy, so _die_ ’ sort of way, but in a ‘away from me, insect’ sort of way.  Now, suddenly, they’re _not_ fighting.  In fact, they’re working _together_ against every random evil demon we meet, not just Naraku.  Sesshomaru was the one to bring InuYasha to Saito’s village, took him straight to the healer.  He’s working to save his life _right now_ , so please tell me, Rin, what’s _going on?_ ”

            “Sesshomaru…he’s _changed_ ,” Rin said with a hush.  “He’s not like how you said he was, anymore.  He says…that _I_ made him change.”

            “Last night, InuYasha told me that he and Sesshomaru had some kind of ‘talk,’” Kagome revealed.  “You must have been there.  What did they say?”

            “Sesshomaru wants…to _make up_ with InuYasha, to atone for the things he did,” Rin answered.  “He wants to make it _official_.”

            “Official?” Kagome repeated.  “How?”

            “By letting InuYasha have… _me_.”

            Kagome stared at Rin for a second, then couldn’t help but break out into a grinning laugh.  Miroku and Sango looked her way and she forced herself to quiet down.  “So, Sesshomaru wants to _give_ you to InuYasha?  As in _sexually?_   Am I hearing you right?”

            “Well, maybe not _give_ , but _share_ , yes,” Rin confirmed.  “Uh…it may not have been _all_ Sesshomaru’s idea, either…”

            Kagome gave Rin a sly smile.  “I _knew_ it,” she whispered with restrained pleasure and absolutely _no_ anger, but approval.  After all, she allowed InuYasha to take not just herself to bed, but Shizu, Sango, and sometimes, even Shiori.  She had no objection to including Rin in that list.  To her, Rin was utterly _worthy_.  “I saw how concerned you were when you saw what happened to InuYasha today.  I’ve _seen_ the way you look at him.”  Rin’s blush became even hotter and Kagome continued: “Do you love him?”

            Rin swallowed thickly, her heart hammering in her chest.  “Yes,” she declared honestly and aloud for the first time.  Contemplating her love for InuYasha, she realized that she had grown up seeing him on a regular basis.  From a distance, he looked so much like Sesshomaru, but his personality was completely different.  He could be a little abrasive, but she knew that his semi-coarse exterior was a façade he used to conceal a heart of gold.  The intensity with which he protected his friends and the times he had protected _her,_ personally, had earned him her respect and adoration, and as she became a woman, that respect and adoration became love outright.

            Kagome saw the resolution in Rin’s eyes and next asked: “Do you _want_ him?”

            Now, Rin could barely manage a _squeak_ , remembering the heights of pleasure to which InuYasha and Sesshomaru took her the night before, all without really _touching_ her _._   “ _Y-yes!_ ” she answered.  Her desire for InuYasha was only logical.  She harbored an emotional love for him already and she wanted to take that love to the physical level.

            Beaming Rin a warm, accepting smile, Kagome reached out with both hands and grasped the younger woman’s shoulders, shaking her gently to emphasize what she said next.  “Then you’ll _have_ him.  Let’s take these herbs to InuYasha and help him get well again.  Then, I’ll show you how much _fun_ he can be.”

            Rin returned Kagome’s smile with barely-contained excitement and clutched the herbs she had gathered to her chest.  Kagome gathered her own bundle of herbs and led Rin to rejoin first with Miroku, Sango, Kirara, and Saito, then with Jaken and Ah-Un as they waited outside the meadow.  Together, they all hurried back to Saito’s village, with Kagome and Rin especially eager to speed up InuYasha’s recovery.

~~~~

 

**(Soundtrack: Edguy – Key to My Fate)**

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knCHNdln-P8>

When Kagome, Rin, and those who had accompanied them to the meadow returned to Keiji’s house inside Saito’s village, they immediately heard cries of pain resounding from within.  Those cries were InuYasha’s.  They had been away from him for less than an hour and already, his condition had worsened.  They rushed back inside to find him writhing and struggling blindly upon Keiji’s futon, held down by Sesshomaru’s superior, armored weight as Keiji force-fed him another dose of anti-venom medicine.

            As InuYasha choked down his medicine, Keiji saw Kagome and the others enter, noting the herbs they carried.  “You’ve got the herbs!  Good!” he approved.  “Please, give them to me.”

            Kagome handed Keiji her bundle and the bundles that Rin, Miroku, Sango, and Saito had collected.  The village healer took the herbs to his work table and began stripping their blue-tipped leaves from their stems with a small knife, working with visible urgency.  While Keiji prepared more medicine, Kagome and Rin went to InuYasha’s side next to Sesshomaru.

            InuYasha’s thrashing became weaker and more lethargic as Keiji’s latest dose of medicine became effective, allowing Sesshomaru to use less force in restraining him.  Cold sweat had broken out on his brow and his bare upper body, his breathing rough and labored.  Even with Keiji’s medicine at work within him, he struggled to cope with Kuno’s venom.  Kagome and Rin felt cold, hard fear grip their hearts at the wretched sight of him, to say nothing of how Miroku, Sango, or any of the others felt by the terrible sounds he had been making.

            InuYasha opened his golden eyes to look up at Sesshomaru.  By the effect of Kuno’s venom on his sight, the daiyoukai’s face was blurred to him.  The expression that Sesshomaru saw in InuYasha’s eyes and upon his face was one of near-mindlessness, mindlessness through raw agony alone.  InuYasha blinked as he stared at Sesshomaru, tears welling up over his eyes and slipping away to be lost in his silvery mane as it lay beneath his head.  “ _Dad?_ ” he asked, with all the innocence of a young boy meeting his estranged father for the first time.

            Sesshomaru grew tense as an unfamiliar sensation overcame him: helplessness.  InuYasha was delirious, hallucinating in mistaking him for the late, great Inu no Taisho, and he knew of nothing he could do about it.  InuYasha next looked at Kagome, this time mistaking her for Izayoi, the human noblewoman with whom the Inu no Taisho had sired him.  He spoke with the same heartbreaking innocence: “ _Mom?_ ”

            The significance of a proud, powerful half-demon warrior like InuYasha reduced to calling out for his mother was not lost on Rin.  She began to weep softly and Kagome pulled her close, fighting back her own tears.  The miko from the future countered her despair with her knowledge and reason.  “Don’t worry, Rin,” she reassured.  “InuYasha’s been through a lot worse than _this_.”

            Sesshomaru turned to look down at Kagome as she held Rin.  Less optimistic that her, he agreed with her in principle, regretting that more than a little of that ‘worse’ she referred to consisted of things he, personally, had done to InuYasha.  Silently, he appreciated the comfort the miko offered to his mate, recognizing the bond growing between them.  That bond was one between two young women, each of whom would call a silver-haired, sword-swinging dolt like himself or his brother ‘husband,’ or ‘mate,’ or even ‘beloved.’

            Having ground up some more anti-venom herb and mixed it with water to create a thin, runny green solution, Keiji returned to InuYasha’s side with a cup of the solution in hand.  Again, Sesshomaru helped the healer get the stuff down InuYasha’s throat.  “How much more of this will InuYasha need?” the daiyoukai asked insistently.

            Keiji shook his head in dismay as he used a soft, wet cloth to wipe away excess medicine from InuYasha’s mouth, then dab away the sweat gathered on the inu hanyou’s forehead.  “I’m afraid I can’t say, my lord.  We’ve already given him far more than what should have been sufficient.  This venom that the oni put in him…it’s the most resilient I’ve ever encountered.”

            Starting from about two hours past noon, several more hours passed and night came.  The sun disappeared below the forested horizon and in its place, a waning half-moon rose to cast Saito’s village and the mountain behind it in dim moonlight.  Keiji worked diligently without rest the entire time, but against Kuno’s venom, he and InuYasha were fighting a losing battle, and the hanyou warrior’s condition deteriorated little by little.  During this time, Saito shifted between his own house and Keiji’s, checking on his family and InuYasha and his pack.

            Kagome and Rin sat together on the floor of Keiji’s house, clasping together in total silence.  Miroku and Sango sat across from them, silent as well.  Saito entered Keiji’s house, immediately perceiving the grim, hopeless atmosphere.  “It’s getting late,” he said to everyone present, Sesshomaru included.  “Would you like something to eat?”

            Kagome looked at Rin, then at Miroku, Sango, and Sesshomaru in turn.  Not one appeared to be interested.  On behalf of all, she replied: “If InuYasha doesn’t eat, then neither do _we_.”

            Then, a large, shaggy black dog burst into Keiji’s house, barreling straight into Saito from behind.  It knocked him down and the village lord sat up on the wooden floor, not angry with the dog, but surprised.  “ _Well!”_ he exclaimed.  Having a natural affinity for dogs regardless that a very powerful dog demon like Sesshomaru was present, one who would likely take offense if he was anything but cordial, he began to speak to the dog as if it could understand.  “What’s your name, my canine friend?  Where are you from?”

            The dog panted heavily, appearing to have run a long distance, a long amount of time, or both.  It then sat on its haunches and used one of its hind legs to scratch behind one of its floppy black ears.  Once it had satisfied its itch, it stood back up and turned around to leave as quickly as it had arrived.  Across the room, Sesshomaru took to his feet, immediately recognizing the scent that the dog had brought into the house.  “ _Myoga_ ,” he addressed boldly.

            Kagome, Rin, Miroku, and Sango perked up at the name.  “ _Myoga!?_ ”

            A tiny black shape remained upon the floor of Keiji’s house where the dog had just stood.  Less than half an inch in height, the generally humanoid shape began to _move_ , bounding across the floor toward Sesshomaru with a speed and agility that would have been impossible for a human, if that human had been shrunk down to the same size.  Sesshomaru knelt and presented the back of a pale hand to the shape, allowing it to leap onto him.

            Kagome, Rin, Miroku, Sango, Saito, and even Keiji gathered around Sesshomaru, and the daiyoukai stood up to extend his hand toward them, allowing them to see.  There, atop his hand, stood _Myoga_ , a tiny, sentient flea demon and former servant of the Inu no Taisho.  With receding gray hair and dressed in tiny versions of a peasant’s haori and hakama, the little flea looked rather like Keiji, except for his extra pair of arms, his blood-sucking proboscis, and his peculiarly-large, tiny-pupiled eyes.

            Myoga lowered himself to a prostrate position atop Sesshomaru’s hand, making maximum respect to the towering demon lord.  “Good evening, Lord Sesshomaru!” he bid.  He then stood up and bowed to all the people gathered around to see him.  “Hello, everyone.”  From Sesshomaru’s hand, Myoga saw InuYasha laying on Keiji’s futon, clearly in pain, and turned to face Sesshomaru again.  “I felt Master InuYasha transform into a full demon.  I came as fast as I could.  What has happened, my lord?”

            “InuYasha and I engaged an oni in battle,” Sesshomaru said.  “It is dead, but it bit InuYasha before he and I could kill it.”

            “ _Bit?_ ” Myoga repeated, grasping the nature of InuYasha’s condition.  “Kami-sama.  I must try to purge InuYasha’s blood right away!  Please, set me onto him.”

            Kagome looked at Miroku and Sango with sudden hopefulness, seeing the same expression on their faces as they looked at her.  All three of them knew of Myoga’s ability to purify a person’s blood of venom or other poisons.  Some years before, Myoga had used that ability to save their lives after they were attacked by Mukotsu, the poison-making chemical weapons expert of the Shichinintai, the _Seven Man Army_.  Back then, Mukotsu had stealthily flooded a house they were staying in with some kind of toxic gas.  Myoga’s act of sucking their blood to extract the poison they inhaled had prevented them from dying.  Now, they hoped he could do the same with InuYasha.

            Sesshomaru stepped away from the others and lowered his hand to InuYasha’s chest, letting Myoga hop off his hand and fall a few inches to land on a spot right over the hanyou warrior’s heart.  By the small size of his body compared to InuYasha’s, InuYasha’s heartbeat was as rapid, booming thunder beneath the flea’s feet.  Its harsh, erratic rhythm worried him and he knew he had to hurry.

            After a few quick leaps, Myoga reached InuYasha’s neck, positioning himself directly over his pounding carotid artery.  Sesshomaru held down InuYasha’s hands, so that in his unconscious state, he wouldn’t be able to swat Myoga flat undeservedly.  Myoga aimed his proboscis for InuYasha’s artery and plunged in, drinking deeply of the oxygen-rich hanyou blood flowing through it.

            Myoga savored the taste of InuYasha’s blood.  For a flea like him, it was utterly delicious, laced with demonic power inherited from his master, the great Inu no Taisho.  However, he could soon taste Kuno’s venom, as well, as potent and virulent as any poison he had encountered up until that moment.  Fed a steady stream of InuYasha’s blood, his body acted as a filter, separating Kuno’s venom from the blood and storing it, allowing him to inject only purified blood back into InuYasha’s body.

            Several minutes passed and little by little, Myoga’s body began to swell up as it filled with Kuno’s venom.  The venom had no effect on him as it occupied only his curiously-evolved demonic digestive tract, not his own bloodstream.  Once he could no longer taste any venom in InuYasha’s blood, he disconnected his proboscis and released his grip on InuYasha’s neck, his swollen body plopping to the futon InuYasha lay upon with all the grace of a tiny whale beaching itself on a tiny shoal.

            “ _Oh…oh, my,”_ Myoga lamented, clutching his distended stomach with all four tiny arms as he rested on the soft, supporting fabric of the futon beneath him.  “I feel like I could _burst_ …”

            Comically fat with venom, Myoga did not walk or crawl, but _rolled_ himself upon the futon away from InuYasha until he reached the futon’s edge.  He forced himself over it and fell a few inches to land on the wooden floor with a tiny _thump,_ bouncing off the floor slightly by how the liquid contents of his body shifted within him.  Kagome collected him from there, cradling him in her hands carefully so as not to crush him.

            “Oh, _God_...” Sango whispered suddenly, pointing at the place on InuYasha’s shoulder where Kuno had bitten him.  “ _Look!_ ”

            Starting at the wounds left by Kuno’s fangs, InuYasha’s skin began to turn an olive green, the same as the oni’s skin.  It was a discoloration that seemed to spread from within as a very sudden, rapid bruise until it saturated his whole body.  Elsewhere on his body, his blood vessels began to swell, standing in stark profile upon the muscle beneath by their rising pressure.  Soon, that muscle, too, began to bulge out and rearrange its structure to become visibly more angular, more _lethal_.  InuYasha started to struggle and thrash again, and Sesshomaru found that his weight alone wouldn’t be enough to hold the hanyou warrior down for long.  It seemed that Kuno had won at last; InuYasha was becoming _oni_.

            A terrifying growl flowed up InuYasha’s throat and he opened his eyes to reveal to Sesshomaru that they had flooded over glowing blood red, as if he had gone full demon again.  Holding InuYasha as best he could, Sesshomaru glared over an armored shoulder at Rin and everyone else present in Keiji’s house.  “ _Run!”_ he ordered with a snarl.

            Altogether, Rin, Miroku, Sango, Keiji, Saito, and Kagome as she held Myoga, scrambled out of Keiji’s house, leaving Sesshomaru to grapple with InuYasha alone.  InuYasha’s strength was increasing by the second and Sesshomaru manipulated his youki aura to form it into an invisible wall at his back.  It served as an immovable object that allowed Sesshomaru to keep InuYasha wedged firmly to the futon beneath him.

            “InuYasha… _InuYasha!_ ” Sesshomaru barked to try to gain and keep InuYasha’s attention.  Recognition seemed to flash through the green-skinned hanyou warrior’s glowing red eyes and he seethed through clenched teeth, his magenta facial stripes shining, _burning_ at new levels of brightness.  “ _Fight it_ , InuYasha,” Sesshomaru continued.  “Don’t give in!”

            A strangled cry of venom-induced madness ripped from InuYasha’s throat and he broke his arms free from Sesshomaru’s grip, sinking his claws into the daiyoukai’s upper arms.  He drew blood from the pale, muscle-filled flesh the daiyoukai concealed beneath his white haori and held tight to smash their skulls together in a vicious head-butt.  However, he chose to butt heads with perhaps the only being in the world with a thicker skull than himself, and Sesshomaru rose to the challenge, meeting the hanyou warrior blow for blow.

            Frustrated with his inability to knock Sesshomaru off him, InuYasha worked his legs up between his body and the daiyoukai’s.  He bent his knees, planted his bare feet squarely on his brother’s armor cuirass, and pushed with all his might.  Sesshomaru grunted by the pressure InuYasha created on his midsection, feeling his armor beginning to bend and buckle by the hanyou’s incredible, oni-like strength, but the invisible youki wall at his back did not budge, and InuYasha only succeeded in driving himself deeper and deeper into the futon beneath him.

            The floorboards of Keiji’s house gave first, cracking and splintering as InuYasha inadvertently thrust himself and the futon he lay upon right through the floor and into the earth below.  He was a dog demon with a predisposition to _dig_ , so instead of fighting Sesshomaru any longer, he flipped himself over and began to tunnel his way down, throwing broken wood and large amounts of dirt up into Sesshomaru’s face.

            Sesshomaru allowed himself a small smile, reminded of InuYasha’s dog-like nature and his own.  Squinting his eyes and turning his face away from the fountain of freshly-excavated earth blasting up at him, he reached down and seized InuYasha by an ankle.  “Oh, no you _don’t_ ,” he chastised as he ripped InuYasha out of the tunnel he had started to dig.

            His voice warped by partial oni transformation and producing nothing but a stream of guttural, unintelligible curses, InuYasha hung upside down, dangling ankle-first from Sesshomaru’s clawed hand.  Immediately, he used his own clawed hands to slash wildly at his brother’s silk-clad legs, but the daiyoukai’s arm was long enough to hold him well out of reach.  Unfortunately, InuYasha’s inverted position seemed to tell the oni venom in him to focus on his arms and suddenly, in a surge of grotesque skeletal and muscular transformation, one of his arms grew much larger and longer than the other.  This put Sesshomaru’s legs in range of at least one set of his claws.

            InuYasha used his new, giant arm to slash at Sesshomaru’s legs again and this time, his claws hit home, slicing through the white silk of the daiyoukai’s hakama and lacerating the flesh beneath.  “ _Hn_ ,” Sesshomaru contemplated with a grunt, his eyes narrowing viciously by the pain.  For his own part, the daiyoukai recognized that InuYasha was increasingly dangerous in his semi-oni state, and he knew he had to get him away from Saito’s village and everyone in it as quickly as possible.

            Gripping InuYasha’s foot tight, Sesshomaru turned and flung InuYasha’s entire body overhead to slam him down into the floor of Keiji’s house, sending him right through the floorboards and giving him a hard stun.  He repeated this action three or four times, leaving three or four vaguely InuYasha-shaped holes in the floor.  Then, the demon lord summoned his youki, manifesting it about his body as a rippling green field of incandescent light.  He directed it to begin turning his body about the heel of one of his booted feet, causing him and InuYasha to begin spinning in place.  With him holding InuYasha by only one of his feet, InuYasha’s body acted as a crude, segmented, ivory-maned flail, smashing through shelves and tables and blunting over the walls, thoroughly ruining the interior of Keiji’s house.  Sesshomaru attuned his youki field to suit his own mass and InuYasha’s, and they began to spin faster, faster, and faster…

            Outside Keiji’s house, InuYasha’s entire pack, as well as the village residents, heard the fight raging within, listening with mounting apprehension.  Being the house’s owner, Keiji himself was especially concerned, dreading the scene that awaited him when he got back inside.  Suddenly, the ones standing closest to the house all leapt back or fell to the ground, searching for cover as a howling, InuYasha-shaped projectile smashed through the roof in a red, white, and green flesh-colored blur.  The hanyou warrior sailed into the night sky on a ballistic trajectory that took him at least a mile out of the village, in the general direction of the nearby mountain.  Sesshomaru stepped out of Keiji’s damaged house just in time to see the final moments of InuYasha’s flight, seeing him entering the mountain’s thick forest canopy head-first and hearing the splintering, crashing racket that resulted a few seconds later.

            “ _Sesshomaru!”_ Kagome cried out as she, Rin and the rest of InuYasha’s pack rushed forward to meet the demon lord that had just hammer-tossed InuYasha into the next prefecture.

            Brushing fresh dirt from his haori with one hand, Sesshomaru held a sheathed Tetsuseiga in the other, slipping it underneath his golden obi alongside Tenseiga and Bakusaiga.  Judging from InuYasha’s glowing red eyes and facial markings, he reasoned that the oni transformation affecting his brother had driven his demon blood out of control.  In the coming minutes, he predicted that Tetsuseiga’s calming, sealing effect could be vital to reining him in.

            As InuYasha’s friends approached him, Sesshomaru glanced briefly at Kagome, then at Myoga as the miko from the future cradled the small, venom-gorged flea demon in her hands.  “Myoga.  You drained the venom from InuYasha’s blood, yet he has transformed anyway.  _Explain_ ,” he demanded.

            Myoga forced himself up into a sitting position in Kagome’s hands, so as not to speak to Sesshomaru while lying on his back.  “It seems I was too late, after all.  Please forgive me, my lord,” he apologized.  “I removed all the venom I could from Master InuYasha, but in the time between when the oni bit him and when I reached him, the venom must have somehow _bonded_ with his insides.”

            Concerned with what this meant for InuYasha, Miroku looked down at Myoga and asked: “What can we do now?”

            Myoga turned his head to listen to Miroku, then returned his attention to Sesshomaru in front of him.  Realistically, the flea knew that the daiyoukai had only two options.  The first: _kill InuYasha_.  If InuYasha really had become oni, if he had transformed into some kind of wild, rabid, dog/ogre demon monster, then putting him down might be mercy for him and a service to the entire population of the Japanese countryside.  However, Myoga found the idea wholly repugnant, to actually suggest that one son of the Inu no Taisho kill the other for any reason.  He felt it would be an unforgivable disservice to the memory of his late master.  Besides, Myoga couldn’t be sure that if he uttered the terrible words, Sesshomaru _wouldn’t_ cleave him in half on the spot.

            Therefore, Myoga spoke the only remaining option.  “Bite InuYasha, as the oni did,” he said to Sesshomaru, to the demon lord’s intrigue.  “Replace the oni’s venom with a superior one, your _own_.”

            Shizu and Shiori glanced at each other with uncertainty.  “God, what will that even _do?_ ” Shizu asked of Myoga.

            “Potentially, it may do several things, milady,” Myoga said, answering Shizu directly.  “It may neutralize the oni’s venom in InuYasha’s blood and return him to a normal hanyou, or it may do nothing at all.  It may _kill_ him, or it may _elevate_ him…into _daiyoukai_.”

            Sesshomaru’s golden eyes narrowed.  _Daiyoukai_.  The silver-haired demon lord grew thoughtful.  He knew that for all InuYasha’s life, he had exploited the difference in class between them.  Before he met Rin, he had been quick, relentless to remind InuYasha of his status as a ‘mere’ hanyou and took full advantage of his own, greater power in their various fights.  InuYasha’s acquisition of Tetsuseiga had leveled the playing field somewhat, but their separation in class remained, a product of their differing parentage.  Now, Sesshomaru desired to atone to InuYasha for his past transgressions and beyond giving him sexual access to Rin, the demon lord could finally see a way to make his atonement more complete, more meaningful. 

            By making InuYasha into a daiyoukai, Sesshomaru could restore his brother to sanity, and in the process, give him the same power that he himself enjoyed!

            A terrible, powerful roar, distressed rather than menacing, resounded from the mountain where Sesshomaru had tossed InuYasha just a few moments before.  Great flocks of birds, sleeping up until that moment, fled their nests by its report.  To Sesshomaru and all the others, InuYasha sounded to still be in great pain.  The daiyoukai knew he had to act immediately and he looked down among InuYasha’s pack gathered around him.  He focused his attention on Kagome.  “Kagome.  The subjugation necklace that InuYasha wears – you can activate it, correct?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Kagome answered truthfully, yet anxiously.

            Sesshomaru extended a hand toward the miko from the future.  “Good.  Come with me.”

            Kagome turned to Miroku and handed Myoga off to him, then faced Sesshomaru again. With only a little hesitation, she stepped closer to the demon lord, taking his hand as he offered.  Grasping Kagome’s hand securely, Sesshomaru spoke to the rest of InuYasha’s pack.  “The rest of you, follow as quickly as you are able.  Kagome and I may need _all_ of your help before this is over.”

            With that, Sesshomaru scooped Kagome off her feet and summoned his youki to rise into the air, high above InuYasha’s other friends and the surrounding village.  Once he felt he had reached an appropriate altitude, he remembered how Saito reacted to what he was about to do, and he warned to Kagome: “Brace yourself.”

 

**-To be continued-**


	16. Hanyou Ascension - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> InuYasha succumbs to the transformation caused by the oni Kuno’s venomous bite, becoming a massive bipedal, green-skinned demonic beast that Kagome compares to the Incredible Hulk of her own time.  Per Myoga’s advice, Sesshomaru takes drastic action to spare InuYasha from a life as such a creature, and to prevent him from harming anyone…

 

**(Continued from pt. 1)**

            A terrible, powerful roar, distressed rather than menacing, resounded from the mountain where Sesshomaru had tossed InuYasha just a few moments before.  Great flocks of birds, sleeping up until that moment, fled their nests by its report.  To Sesshomaru and all the others, InuYasha sounded to still be in great pain.  The daiyoukai knew he had to act immediately and he looked down among InuYasha’s pack gathered around him.  He focused his attention on Kagome.  “Kagome.  The subjugation necklace that InuYasha wears – you can activate it, correct?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Kagome answered truthfully, yet anxiously.

            Sesshomaru extended a hand toward the miko from the future.  “Good.  Come with me.”

            Kagome turned to Miroku and handed Myoga off to him, then faced Sesshomaru again. With only a little hesitation, she stepped closer to the demon lord, taking his hand as he offered.  Grasping Kagome’s hand securely, Sesshomaru spoke to the rest of InuYasha’s pack.  “The rest of you, follow as quickly as you are able.  Kagome and I may need _all_ of your help before this is over.”

            With that, Sesshomaru scooped Kagome off her feet and summoned his youki to rise into the air, high above InuYasha’s other friends and the surrounding village.  Once he felt he had reached an appropriate altitude, he remembered how Saito reacted to what he was about to do, and he warned to Kagome: “Brace yourself.”

            Kagome barely managed a ‘ _What?’_ before Sesshomaru morphed them both into a sphere of demonic light, as he had done earlier with InuYasha and Saito.  Moving as sentient ball lightning, they accelerated toward the nearby mountain, with Sesshomaru guiding them to roughly the spot where he saw InuYasha land after hammer-tossing him out of Keiji’s house and Saito’s village.  Descending through the ragged hole that InuYasha’s body had made in the mountain forest canopy, the daiyoukai reverted himself and his miko passenger to humanoid form, setting her down onto the forest floor carefully and not releasing her completely until he was sure she wasn’t going to collapse from sudden nausea.

            Fortunately, Kagome had a much stronger stomach than Saito, having developed it from years of riding on InuYasha’s or Shippo’s backs, during hard maneuvers in and out of battle.  She experienced only momentary dizziness and steadied herself upon her feet to immediately find the crater that InuYasha made in the forest floor when he crashed through the canopy above.  A trail of broken trees led away from the crater, creating a jagged fissure in the canopy.  It was as a path for her and Sesshomaru to follow.

            “Look,” Kagome pointed to the swath of destruction in front of her.

            Sesshomaru nodded.  “Yes.  Follow me,” he said, deliberately placing himself ahead of Kagome in order to be the first presented with danger, if it appeared.

            Together, Sesshomaru and Kagome moved on foot through the dark mountain forest, the only light being that which shone down through the ruined canopy from the waning half-moon above.  Sesshomaru limited his speed so that Kagome could keep pace.  Wisely, Kagome wore not the wooden sandals of a 16th-century miko, but a pair of hiking boots from her own time, ones that allowed her to move over the uneven terrain relatively quickly and with good stability.

            The path that InuYasha inadvertently left for Sesshomaru and Kagome took them toward the summit of the mountain and soon, they could hear the hanyou warrior’s voice resounding through the forest before them.  It had become even more warped, bestial, and animalistic than before, the pain and desperation in it gnawing at Kagome’s heart.  Reaching the summit, they found InuYasha sitting on his knees in a grassy clearing there, the waning half-moon hung directly above them all.

**(Soundtrack: Darkane – Wrath Connection)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYsNkqyIqcQ** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYsNkqyIqcQ)

            InuYasha hunched over, clutching at a bare side with his one, normal-sized arm while he used his giant, oni-sized one to claw at the ground.  The oni transformation continued to ravage his body, and Sesshomaru could hear a series of unsettling, cartilage-cushioned creaks and pops emanating from his skeleton.  He and Kagome watched with mounting horror as the hanyou warrior’s entire body grew before their eyes, just as Kuno’s had.  What had begun in Keiji’s house a few minutes earlier was about to reach completion.  Stumbling clumsily as he forced himself onto his rapidly-expanding feet, InuYasha gave another earth-shaking roar, howling to the starry night sky and the moon as his overall skeletal and muscular structure _quadrupled_ in size and mass in a matter of seconds.  His shoulders, ribs, and arms bulked out in erratic, asymmetrical spurts of growth, the rest of his body following suit.  When the growth finally evened out and ceased, he stood nearly ten feet tall and weighed more than a thousand pounds, not nearly the size of Kuno, but still relatively _huge_.

            The red Fire-Rat hakama InuYasha wore fit quite loosely for his legs’ normal size, but in his hulking oni state, it could barely contain them.  His legs became as tree trunks made of solid, green-skinned muscle and his hakama stretched taut, ripping open around their incredible girth.  Similarly, the growth of his waist had broken the ties that held his hakama above his hips and now, his hakama remained in place by sheer friction alone.  His ivory mane grew to match his new height.  In his normal form, his mane had been four feet long against his overall height of six feet.  Now, his mane alone was six feet long, a great mass of ivory hair that shimmered in the moonlight and billowed in the gentle mountain breeze.

            InuYasha’s subjugation necklace of enchanted beads, made by Kaede years earlier, sensed the changes in the size of its wearer’s body and changed its own size to match.  If it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been so much a necklace, but a _collar_ for an especially unusual kind of very large, coatless, green-skinned dog.  By the effect of Kaede’s miko magic, the cord binding the beads extended in length and the beads themselves scaled up in size so that no gaps between them existed.

            The transformation complete, InuYasha felt his bizarre growing pains ease and he grew strangely quiet, standing up straight to reach his full, ten-foot height.  The whites of his eyes glowing bright, demonic red and his irises as vertical slits that glowed incandescent green, he stared up at the moon as if in wonder, its silent rays seeming to speak to him.  His breath flowing in and out of his nose in loud, vigorous movements of air, his transformed heart beat potently in his enlarged, furry dog ears, a hard, rhythmic, incredibly powerful _ba-BUMP, ba-BUMP_ that both Sesshomaru and Kagome could _feel_.  Then, after a few moments of silence, his upper lip curled back over his sharp incisors and his whole squarish, hulking green face contorted into an enraged sneer as he snarled out at the moon, the sound his mighty lungs produced seeming to shake the mountain beneath him.

            Seething with irrational, moon-induced rage, InuYasha stomped over to a nearby tree, his giant feet pounding upon the ground by their size, weight, and the power of the muscles driving them.  Sinking the massive, clawed fingers of both hands through the tree’s outer bark and into the wood within, he heaved upward with a deep grunt, the vast amounts of muscle in his arms, chest, and abdomen bulging with unimaginable strength as he ripped the tree right out of the ground, roots and all.  The sound of the tree’s roots snapping was that of hundreds of matchlock muskets firing in a single, thunderous volley.  Balancing the entire tree upon one giant hand, a fully-grown oak that weighed perhaps thousands of pounds, InuYasha turned, then jogged forward and cast the tree at the moon as an ad-hoc javelin, seeking to knock the moon out of the sky.

            Strong as he might be, even InuYasha couldn’t accelerate an object like an oak tree to sufficient velocity to actually _hit_ the moon.  If he had, the tree would have simply burned up in the air well before making it out into space.  Still, the tree flew an impressive distance, leaving a trail of leaves fluttering in the air behind it as it arced back down to earth and crashed into forest some _hundreds_ of yards down the mountain slope.

            Sesshomaru and Kagome were both suitably impressed with InuYasha’s display of raw physical strength.  The daiyoukai was seriously wary of his brother’s abilities now, while the miko from the future was mildly terrified.  Perhaps more worryingly to Kagome, InuYasha reminded her of someone she had seen before, or at least seen and read about through televised news and the Internet during her periodic visits home.  It was an idea that had been on her mind since she first witnessed Kuno in his super-oni form.  She was reminded of a person from her own time, a certain American man who could supposedly transform into a giant green, rage-filled brute and throw things, hit things, run and jump further, faster, and with far more destructive power than any ordinary human and maybe some _youkai_ she’d met.  The TV and Internet news identified him as U.S. nuclear physicist Dr. Bruce Banner, attaching a catchy moniker: _The_ _Incredible Hulk_.

            Kagome wondered: if InuYasha was now the 16th-century Japanese analogue to her time’s Incredible Hulk, what should she call him?  The ‘ _Incredible InuYasha?_ ’  ‘ _Oni-Yasha?’_   The ‘ _Inu-credible Hulk?_ ’  Or simply ‘ _InuHulk?’_ Whatever term she decided on, she knew that she and Sesshomaru had to get him under control before he could hurt anyone.

            InuYasha sensed Sesshomaru and Kagome’s presence and whirled around with a deep growl to put them directly in front of him.  Now they could see the dramatic effect of the oni transformation on his face.  To Kagome, the hanyou hulk looked very much like the Hulk from her time, animalistic yet strangely, ruggedly handsome at once.  His skull and facial bones had enlarged, his face becoming broader and more as a rounded, sloping square toward the chin.  Generally, his facial features had all scaled up, yet spaced out to a greater degree, his wide mouth separated from his seemingly scrunched-up nose by a very tall, smooth upper lip.  His brows had swelled up and bulged out in Neanderthal fashion, casting his eyes in deep shadow and accentuating their demonic glow. 

            Looking upward from InuYasha’s brows, Kagome took some small relief in finding that his furry white dog ears, perhaps her favorite part of his unique half-demon appearance, had remained largely intact.  They had grown along with his ivory mane, protruding up and out from his hair by the same relative amount as before and retaining their own fine, white hair.  Their pink interior had become a light shade of green.  Had the situation not been so dangerous, Kagome might have marched forward, tugged InuYasha’s head down by one of his ivory forelocks, and started playing with them!

            For his own part, Sesshomaru was less concerned with the finer points of InuYasha’s new appearance than he was with the sheer amount of muscle the hanyou warrior had put on.  His neck alone looked like a short, squat green _mountain._   Kuno had been trouble enough on his own, so Sesshomaru couldn’t predict how he would measure up to an oni-fied, hulked-out InuYasha.He stepped forward cautiously, gesturing for Kagome to remain behind him.  “InuYasha,” he spoke, gauging the hanyou hulk’s reaction to his own name.  InuYasha’s big white dog ears twitched and rotated with interest, focusing on Sesshomaru as the daiyoukai drew closer.  “Do you recognize me?”

            “ _Rrrr…_ ” InuYasha vocalized, his vocal cords seeming to have been warped in his throat.  Words were clearly difficult for him.  “ _Sssss…’Shomaru…_ ”

            “ _Yes_ ,” Sesshomaru encouraged to his hulking brother.  The violent madness InuYasha exhibited in Keiji’s house seemed to have passed, leaving him in a childlike state – unstable, prone to violent outbursts, but generally calm.  Carefully, without making any sudden movements, Sesshomaru slipped Tetsuseiga out from under his obi, glancing down at it as he held it crosswise in his hand.  It pulsed insistently within its scabbard, sensing its master’s plight and eager to be reunited with him.  “Your sword calls to you, InuYasha.  Take it.”

            Sesshomaru held Tetsuseiga out to InuYasha and with visible hesitation, the hanyou hulk crept forward on all fours as a huge, feral animal, his nose twitching as he constantly sniffed the air for danger.  He came within feet of Sesshomaru, easily dwarfing him, and the daiyoukai stood his ground boldly, lifting Tetsuseiga until it was level with the hanyou warrior’s glowing eyes.  InuYasha reached out with a single, massive green hand, closing his fingers around Tetsuseiga’s long hilt and completely covering it.  The great fang spoke to his blood, calming it in his veins.

            InuYasha closed his eyes, crooning as if in relief as Tetsuseiga worked its effect on him.  He opened his eyes again and his green, slit-like irises widened into ordinary circles, their color shifting back to gold, still surrounded by glowing blood red.  “ _Sess_ … _Sesshomaru!_ ” he struggled, not truncating Sesshomaru’s name this time.  His voice remained very deep, rasping, and gravelly, like that of Kagome’s ‘Hulk,’ but now, there was some measure of sanity behind it.

            “Yes, InuYasha, I’m _here,_ ” Sesshomaru comforted to his brother.  “Kagome is here, as well.  The others are on their way.”

            “ _Sesshomaru…help.  Help me!_ ” InuYasha pleaded.

            “I _will_ ,” Sesshomaru promised.  “You’re in this state because the oni bit you.  Myoga says I can cure you of this… _condition…_ with my own bite.  Do you understand?”

            “ _Bite_ ,” InuYasha repeated, screwing his eyes shut and shaking his big green, ivory-haired head from side to side.  The hanyou warrior’s mind was scrambled by the oni transformation and the word ‘bite’ conjured mental snapshots of the moment when Kuno opened his mouth to reveal his hideous fangs, followed by the mind-bending pain of those fangs plunging into his flesh and unleashing their venom.  He opened his eyes again and their golden irises reverted to incandescent green slits.  His lips curled back to bare gleaming white teeth as he roared into Sesshomaru’s face.  “ _Grrr…bite.  Bite! **NO BITE!** ”_

Stripping Tetsuseiga from Sesshomaru’s grasp, InuYasha shot up into a standing position before the daiyoukai, towering over him by three whole feet.  Angrily, he cast Tetsuseiga off into the forest and raised both massive arms high, clenching his clawed hands into hard fists and slamming them back down to try and drop them right onto Sesshomaru’s head.  Sesshomaru leapt back out of the way and InuYasha’s fists bore down into the ground where he had just stood, crushing the solid earth in with ease. 

            Kagome felt the shock of InuYasha’s double-fisted blow travel through the ground, shuddering past her beneath her feet.  Keeping himself between her and InuYasha, Sesshomaru glanced at her over a shoulder.  “The necklace,” he said, returning his attention to InuYasha as the hanyou hulk lumbered forward at him, moving and speeding up to attack again.  “ _Use it!_ ”

            Seeing InuYasha’s violent disposition, Kagome hardly needed Sesshomaru to tell her a second time.  “ _InuYasha!_ ” she called, the tone of her voice speaking not only to the hanyou hulk, but also to the enchanted necklace he still wore.  The necklace’s beads began to glow softly, as if Kagome had alerted them to stand by for the dreaded ‘S’ word.  “ _SIT!_ ”

            InuYasha leapt at Sesshomaru and the beads in his subjugation necklace glowed much more brightly as Kagome spoke the activation word aloud.  Together, they yanked all thousand-plus pounds of him downward by the neck mid-leap, causing him to nosedive into the ground with a loud cry and dig out a long, deep trough in it by the sheer speed and power with which he had been moving.  He came to rest at Sesshomaru’s booted feet, snarling and clawing as a very large, powerful, and thoroughly wild animal, but otherwise restrained by his necklace.

            With InuYasha flat on his face for the moment, Sesshomaru saw an opportunity to give the hanyou hulk his bite.  He summoned two glowing orbs of his youki into each of his palms and cast them down at InuYasha.  At the end of the orbs’ flight, just before they contacted InuYasha’s green skin, they changed shape, becoming as short segments of their creator’s youki whip.  They curved into open-ended, ‘U’-shaped shackles and slipped over InuYasha’s wrists and ankles, their ends sinking deep into the earth and flaring out at sharp angles to firmly bind the hanyou hulk to the ground.

            Sesshomaru jumped onto InuYasha’s broad, muscled back.  Even with his arms and legs shackled to the ground, the hanyou hulk still fought to shake the daiyoukai off him.  Undaunted, Sesshomaru shoved InuYasha’s giant ivory mane to one side to expose a shoulder and part of his neck, then willed his upper incisors to lengthen.  “Forgive me for this,” he said, just before he lowered his head to InuYasha’s shoulder, near the place where Kuno had bitten him, and sank his teeth into the hanyou hulk’s green flesh.

            And Sesshomaru’s teeth _bounced off!_

Sesshomaru recoiled from the strange sensation of almost the full force of his bite reflecting off InuYasha’s green, muscle-filled skin and traveling back up into his gums.  Stunned for a moment, he closed back in and bit down much harder, struggling to break through his brother’s tough green hide.  Driven by the pain of Sesshomaru gnashing his teeth into his shoulder, InuYasha began to fight back far more violently, his transformed voice producing one unintelligible bestial expletive after another.  The ground surrounding one of Sesshomaru’s youki shackles securing InuYasha’s arms failed abruptly, and while wearing a clod of that crumbling, youki-bound earth around his wrist, the hanyou hulk reached back to grab the daiyoukai by a silk-clad leg.  He ripped Sesshomaru off his back and as if throwing a child’s toy, he flung his roughly 300-pound armored body off into the nearby trees.

            Breaking himself free from Sesshomaru’s remaining shackles, InuYasha forced himself onto his feet, the power of Kagome’s first ‘sit’ fading quickly.  Kagome’s heart pounded as InuYasha looked squarely at her, bloodthirsty rage glowing in his eyes.  She had no idea where Sesshomaru was, at that moment, so she knew that like InuYasha against Kuno earlier in the day, she was alone in facing her hanyou love.  Clearing her throat, she spoke the activation word again before InuYasha could move.  “Sit!”

            The subjugation necklace glowed and yanked InuYasha down by his neck again.  This time, he seemed to anticipate it, bending his knees and extending a huge green palm toward the ground so that the necklace pulled him into a kneeling position, instead of onto his face.  He stood again, visibly slowed by the necklace but overcoming it bit by bit.  “ _Nnngh…_ ” he grunted as the necklace tugged continuously at his thickly muscled neck.  Right then, he resisted a force equal to several times that of Earth’s gravity.  “ _Woman say ‘sit,’ make Inu fall.  Inu **SMASH** Sit Woman!”_

            InuYasha charged at Kagome and with his subjugation necklace no longer having much effect, the miko from the future knew she stood no chance of outrunning him.  Crouching and summoning her reiki about her, she formed a shimmering, spherical barrier of it around herself and ducked her head, squeezing her eyes shut as the hanyou hulk bore down on her.  His giant green fists slammed into her barrier, seriously straining it as the shock of the double blow blasted out into the surrounding forest, shaking the trees in a radial pattern.

            Kagome shrieked as InuYasha snarled and pounded away at her barrier.  She could feel it weakening rapidly, requiring her to feed reiki into it constantly to keep it up.  “InuYasha, stop!” she begged of him.  “Stop, _please!_ ”

            InuYasha’s shattered Kagome’s barrier without much more effort.  As it collapsed around her, she fell onto her rear, scrambling back away from him.  He advanced upon her, looming over her with his incredible size, and he twisted his enormous upper body to one side as he drew a hand back.  He wound up to deliver a vicious, utterly brutal backhand to her terrified face, one that could easily shatter her jaw and break her _neck_.

            Then, several glowing bolts of magic green fire seared down from the sky above the mountain, raking over InuYasha’s chest and abdomen and exploding forcefully to knock him away from Kagome.  Kagome cried out, covering her face with one of her haori’s white sleeves to shield it from the blast and the heat.  With Shizu and Shiori riding on his back, Shippo dove down on her and InuYasha in his Fire-Fox form.  Once close enough to the ground, Shiori reached down to snatch Kagome up by the rear collar of her haori, her hanyou strength allowing her to easily haul the stunned miko onto Shippo’s saddle.  As InuYasha reeled from his Hard Fire blasts, Shippo zoomed back up into the sky, taking himself and his passengers well out of the hanyou hulk’s reach.

            “God, Kagome!” Shizu exclaimed, looking down at InuYasha in awe and terror of his new appearance, then back behind her at her miko friend.  Kagome was visibly pale by how close InuYasha had come to killing her.  “Are you _all right?_ ”

            Kagome couldn’t find the breath to say anything in reply.  From her new vantage point in the sky, she looked down at InuYasha as Shizu did, contemplating him for the mindless beast he had become.  Now, the capacity for indiscriminate violence of his full demon form had joined with Kuno’s brutish oni size and strength.  Sesshomaru had tried to give him his bite and apparently, the daiyoukai had failed.  She wondered: what could they do for him?  _What?_

            InuYasha clutched his smoldering chest where Shippo’s fire bolts had hit him, and through his tussled ivory bangs, he glowered at the Fire Fox as he and his passengers orbited the mountaintop high above him.  Baring his teeth, he crouched low, aiming his entire body at Shippo, then _leapt_.  His thousand-pound form shot through the air as a giant green missile, his ‘ordinary’ superhuman hanyou agility vastly amplified by the oni transformation.

            Kagome, Shizu, and Shiori all saw InuYasha flying toward them as they rode Shippo’s back.  “Shippo, climb!  _Climb!_ ” Kagome cried out to the fox demon carrying herself and her friends.  Swiftly, Shippo nosed upward and accelerated hard, causing InuYasha to pass just underneath him.  All three of Shippo’s passengers clung to his saddle for dear life as he ascended, the pitch of InuYasha’s hulking voice snarling past them seemingly raised, then abruptly lowered by the ‘Doppler’ effect.

            Missing Shippo narrowly, InuYasha fell back down to the forested mountain beneath him, his huge, heavy body crashing through its trees and totally demolishing a few of them.  Sighting Shippo in the sky through the hole in the canopy he made, he jumped after him again, but as he cleared the canopy, his sensitive hanyou ears cocked to one side, allowing him to hear the distinctive, cycling _whoosh_ of Sango’s Hiraikotsu spinning through the air.  The great bone boomerang skimmed the tops of the trees and angled upward in the last few yards of its flight to slam into InuYasha’s side.  The hanyou hulk turned mid-air and slapped it away from him with a deep grunt, deflecting it in such a way that it continued to fly on a different path.

            His momentum interrupted, InuYasha landed in the clearing at the top of the mountain again, forgetting about Shippo and focusing his attention on Sango.  Riding Kirara with Miroku sitting behind her, Sango guided the big neko to intercept and recover Hiraikotsu.  The beautiful taijiya reached out to the boomerang and caught it with a single hand, pulling its leather hand loop to her shoulder as if to throw it again.  Wisely, she and her houshi lover kept close watch on InuYasha, preparing to evade as the hanyou hulk jumped after _them_.

            Just as InuYasha’s big green feet left the ground, a rope of glowing green youki coiled around one of his ankles, arresting his flight and bringing him back down to the ground with an unceremonious _thud_.  It was a youki whip, and Sesshomaru held the other end of it.

**(Soundtrack: Edguy – Under the Moon)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3_Jw5-pvJQ** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3_Jw5-pvJQ)

            His clothes and armor a little scuffed up from being tossed through three or four trees, Sesshomaru’s golden eyes glowed with determination as he reeled his youki whip in to drag InuYasha across the grassy ground.  “InuYasha.  I don’t know if you can understand me, but I won’t let you hurt your friends, especially your _women_ ,” he said, pulling InuYasha toward him.  “If you’re going to fight someone, fight _me_.”

            With Sesshomaru’s youki whip still wrapped around his ankle, InuYasha sat up upon the ground and took hold of his end of the whip, rising onto his feet to pull it taut and engage in the ultimate ‘tug of war’ with his daiyoukai brother.  Sesshomaru felt his booted feet sliding across the dewy grass and he erected an invisible, immovable wall of his youki in front of him to give himself the resistance he needed.  He ceased to slide and he grit his teeth as he pulled on his whip with both hands, the tension in the whip building ever higher.  Now, it was InuYasha’s feet that slid across the ground.  Sesshomaru’s humanoid body concealed enormous strength and with non-Newtonian friction on his side, even the great, terrible InuHulk couldn’t budge him.

            InuYasha dug his feet into the ground, the blood vessels in his arms and neck straining as he reared back, pulling with all his might, and Sesshomaru’s eyes gave a mysterious flash.  The daiyoukai’s youki whip _snapped_ at his silent command, causing InuYasha to stumble backward with a cry, completely off-balance.  With blinding speed, Sesshomaru dissolved his invisible youki wall and rushed forward.  Crossing several dozen yards of open grass in less than a second, he planted the heels of both feet against InuYasha’s face, giving his kick a youki boost to knock the hanyou hulk clean off the whole mountain.

            Sesshomaru kicked InuYasha down the side of the mountain opposite Saito’s village, and he watched the hanyou hulk fall into empty forest.  For what the daiyoukai planned to do next, it was vital that he and InuYasha were as far away from innocent bystanders as possible.  He began to move forward again, his youki aura flaring out for Kagome to see and _feel_. 

            By Kagome’s instruction, Shippo landed on the grass near Sesshomaru, in front of him and off to one side.  “Sesshomaru!” Kagome called, dismounting Shippo from between Shizu and Shiori.  She jogged over to the daiyoukai’s side.  Initially, she thought to ask him about his own well-being, as she had seen InuYasha throw him through several big, sturdy trees, but the intensity and the unique spiritual ‘wavelength’ of his aura changed the topic on her mind.  She realized that she had felt such energy from Sesshomaru once before, back in the extra-dimensional tomb of the Inu no Taisho.  “What are you going to _do?_ ”

            Sesshomaru stopped and looked down at Kagome.  “I won’t kill InuYasha,” he assured.  “But the only way to turn him back from this… _hulk…_ is to give him my bite.  For that, I need bigger _teeth_.”

            Kagome watched as Sesshomaru’s eyes flooded over blood red, his golden irises turning glowing green.  His handsome face began to warp and elongate, his mouth stretching out and filling up with very long, razor sharp teeth.  His skin became as white _fur_.  Kagome turned and ran from him, not necessarily out of fear, but out of wanting to simply _get out of his way_.  Jumping onto Shippo’s back again, she ordered to her Fire Fox friend: “Fly, Shippo!”

            Shippo rose into the sky, pulling back to a safe distance to allow himself and his passengers to watch as Sesshomaru gave himself over to his ‘true’ form.  His body dissolved into a cloud of luminescent pink gas, coalescing into a dense, sentient projectile that danced and trailed around the mountain clearing.  It shot up into the sky, then slammed back down to the ground to expand to a width of several dozen yards, flowing away to reveal a white, shaggy-haired dog.

            A _demonic_ dog that weighed 10,000 pounds – five whole _tons_ \- and stood thirty feet tall!

            His giant, white-haired canine head reaching well above the top of the forest canopy around him, Sesshomaru howled at the moon above, his transformed voice shaking the entire countryside and surely reaching InuYasha’s ears.  He took off running, bounding down the mountain’s forested slope and making his way to the place he had kicked InuYasha a few moments before.

            Peeling himself out of the crater his body made in the forest floor when it landed, InuYasha heard Sesshomaru’s howl and stood up to see the transformed daiyoukai heading straight for him.  Sesshomaru moved at top speed, dodging and weaving around some trees, knocking others over completely.  InuYasha met him head-on, charging across the ground and leaping with fists held high.

            And with a big, white paw, Sesshomaru smacked InuYasha aside like a hulking green _insect_.  Helplessly, InuYasha tumbled along the ground by the force of the blow, and by the time he righted himself, Sesshomaru was already upon him again.  Pawing along on all fours, the giant dog demon lowered his head close to the ground and captured InuYasha’s midsection in his huge, fanged mouth.  Clamping down hard enough to hold InuYasha securely without biting him in half, he turned his head toward the sky and leapt into it, out of the forest.  Using his youki, Sesshomaru ascended at a steep angle, accelerating to the point that a ‘shock cone’ of rapidly-condensing air formed around his muzzle as he broke the speed of _sound_.

            All the while, InuYasha pounded upon the side of Sesshomaru’s long snout with both fists as he tried to escape.  The daiyoukai resisted the mounting pain with steely discipline, continuing his climb until he and InuYasha were thousands of feet above the ground.  Slowing down in the air, he flipped himself end for end and dove, breaking the sound barrier again and this time, going so fast that he could feel _heat_ building up on his triangular dog nose.

            Less than a second before hitting the ground, Sesshomaru opened his mouth to release InuYasha and ‘braked’ by turning his body perpendicular to the airflow.  Screaming, the hanyou hulk dropped away from him and augured into the earth, his body smashing the dirt aside until he was submerged in it up to his _knees_ , starting from his _head_.  Sesshomaru landed near him and with a soft bite, the daiyoukai tugged him out by a flailing ankle, dropping him onto his back.

            Sesshomaru kept his promise to Kagome, for InuYasha continued to breathe.  Planting a paw over the unconscious hulk’s lower body, Sesshomaru shrunk himself down until he was around a third of his maximum size.  He matched the width of his canine jaw to the width of one of InuYasha’s oni-sized shoulders, planting his long, dog demon teeth there and biting down.

            This time, Sesshomaru’s teeth broke through.  His upper incisors reaching maximum depth in InuYasha’s green flesh, the venom-filled glands at their roots contracted potently, driving their contents down through the fangs’ venom channels and out into the hulking hanyou’s blood.  InuYasha came awake at the pain of such a deep, hard bite, seeing nothing but open sky and white fur.  Soon, his whole world began to spin inside his head as his brother’s venom reached his brain, attacking Kuno’s venom at the molecular level and repairing the damage it had done.

            Riding Shippo, Kagome, Shizu, and Shiori reached the skies above Sesshomaru and InuYasha, followed by Miroku and Sango atop Kirara, then Jaken and Rin atop Ah-Un.  Myoga clung to Miroku’s houshi robes, climbing over their various wrinkles and creases to catch sight of the inu brothers far below.  “Look!  He’s _done it!_ ” the flea exclaimed in jubilation at Sesshomaru’s success.

            Shippo, Kirara, and Ah-Un swooped down together to allow their passengers a better look without getting too close too soon.  Having given InuYasha a full dose of his venom, Sesshomaru released his jaws from the hanyou warrior’s shoulder, backing away to observe the results.  Sure enough, InuYasha began to change, the color of his skin reverting from olive green to that of his ordinary, bronzed flesh.  His muscles and bones shrank inside him, his whole body shedding mass – nearly 800 pounds of it - in the form of vast amounts of heat.  Soon, he lay on the ground as normal, drenched in sweat and wearing a stretched, ripped version of his red hakama, but otherwise _normal_.

            After a minute or so, InuYasha opened his eyes, blinking to focus as intense dizziness continued to ravage him.  “ _Ungh...”_ he groaned.  As his sight cleared up, he saw Sesshomaru standing over him, still in his demonic dog form.  No longer a mindless oni hulk, he tried to sit up, but every single one of his muscles protested at once and he sank back down to the ground.  “ _Fuck_ …Sesshomaru?  Is that _you?_ ”

            Sesshomaru studied InuYasha closely, his giant red eyes searching the hanyou warrior up and down for any trace of green.  He found none.  He snorted in acknowledgement, then changed back to his humanoid form for InuYasha and every member of their two packs to see.  Kagome and all the others took this as a sign of safety.  Shippo, Kirara, and Ah-Un landed nearby to let their passengers dismount, and Kagome ran the fastest, rushing to InuYasha’s side.

            “InuYasha!  _InuYasha!_ ” Kagome cried as she pulled her hanyou love into her lap, squeezing him to her.

            For his own part, InuYasha gave a pained laugh, enjoying Kagome’s warmth and scent as his abused body cried for mercy.  “Kagome… _ungh.  Heh_ …let up, will you?  You’re _killing me!_ ”

            Kagome released InuYasha just enough to let him breathe and as Sesshomaru had done, she frantically searched his body for any patches of green.  This led InuYasha to ask: “What the _fuck_ just happened?”

            InuYasha’s friends looked among themselves, not knowing where to begin.  “Let’s start with what you _remember_ ,” Sesshomaru suggested.

            Sitting up with Kagome’s assistance, InuYasha thought carefully.  “The last thing I really remember is that oni, Kuno.  I was fighting him, and then he bit me.  He fucking _bit me!_ After that, I don’t remember much, just bits and pieces.”

            “Kuno _did_ bite you,” Kagome confirmed.  “You had a very… _pronounced_ reaction to his venom.  You became _oni.”_

            InuYasha looked at Kagome, seeing utter seriousness in her ethereal blue eyes.  “Oni, as in the same… _thing_ that Kuno turned into?” he asked.  Kagome nodded and all of InuYasha’s other friends added their confirmation.  The hanyou warrior realized he was naked from the waist up, and he looked down to find his Fire Rat hakama stretched out and ripped as if Kuno had tried to wear them in his oni hulk form.  In a sense, that was exactly what happened.  Worriedly, InuYasha asked further: “Did I hurt anyone?”

            “Thankfully, _no_ ,” Kagome said to InuYasha’s relief, before anyone could say anything else.  A ‘no’ was true enough and right then, InuYasha probably didn’t need to know how close he had come to smashing her into paste.

            “Oh, _shit_ ,” InuYasha cursed as the reason he fought Kuno in the first place returned to his mind.  With great effort, he forced himself onto his feet, bunching part of the stretched-out waist of his hakama into a hand to keep it from falling down.  “Saito’s daughters!  How are _they?_ ”

            “They are unharmed,” Sesshomaru said.  “Shippo took them directly to their parents.”

            “And Kuno?”

            “Dead, and in two _pieces_.”

            “ _Good_ ,” InuYasha exhaled, nodding at Sesshomaru and Shippo in approval.  Looking around him for a moment, he saw nothing but unfamiliar forest.  “Where are we, anyway?”

            “We’re on the other side of the mountain near Saito’s village,” Kagome answered.  “When you went ‘oni,’ Sesshomaru kind of had to _throw you_ out of the village.  He cured you of Kuno’s venom with his own, and it was a wrestle to get it into you.  This is where you ended up.”

            InuYasha looked straight at Sesshomaru, then felt the point on his bare shoulder where the daiyoukai had bitten him.  It still throbbed with some pain, but that minor pain was hardly the point of it.  He could feel the stiffness in his muscles flowing away, replaced by a pleasant warmth as the daiyoukai’s venom worked within him.  It was as if the venom could recognize, _taste_ InuYasha’s tissues as being descended from those of the Inu no Taisho, causing the stuff to repair the damage Kuno’s venom had done.  “Sesshomaru, you fucking _saved my life_.”

            “Of course,” Sesshomaru said flatly, with visible satisfaction.  “You are my brother.”

            InuYasha smiled, then returned his attention to the stretched-out hakama he wore.  “Well, my hakama’s ruined, and I have no idea where my other clothes are,” he lamented, though in overall good spirit.  “They’re probably in Saito’s village.  Do you think they have a tailor there?”

            Kagome bit her lower lip in worried contemplation.  “Maybe…maybe we shouldn’t go back there, just yet,” she suggested.

            InuYasha cocked his head.  “Why’s that?”

            “I said that when you transformed into an oni, Sesshomaru had to throw you out of Saito’s village,” Kagome explained.  “Well, he _may_ have thrown you… _through_ a man’s house, too.”

            “I wouldn’t think they’d be _too_ sore about it,” Miroku comforted.  “Saito and Keiji seem to be quite reasonable, and we can help them rebuild.”

            “Kagome is correct,” Sesshomaru added, to everyone’s interest.  “We should not return to Saito’s village, not immediately.  My venom seems to have had the intended effect on you, InuYasha, but you should not go near humans until we are certain you will not _relapse._ ”

            “So, we shouldn’t go back to Saito’s village, and we probably shouldn’t head on to Edo, either,” InuYasha reasoned.  “Where, then?”

            Sesshomaru looked away from InuYasha and over a shoulder at the mountain standing behind him.  “The oni’s cave,” he said.  “It is far enough from Saito’s village for the villagers’ safety, and we ourselves will be safe there.”

            “If I shouldn’t go near any villagers for a while, does that also mean all of _you_ shouldn’t be near me?” InuYasha asked of all his friends at once.

            “We trust you, InuYasha,” Kagome said, on behalf of the rest of the pack.  “ _I_ trust you.  We’re not going to leave you alone for _anything_.”

            Keeping his ruined hakama up with one hand, InuYasha slipped the other around Kagome’s waist, pulling her close.  “I fucking _love you_ ,” he whispered to her, giving her a short, sweet kiss.

            Together, InuYasha and his pack began the hike to Kuno’s cave, eagerly anticipating some much-needed rest.

 

**-To be continued-**


	17. Relapse - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While InuYasha and Sesshomaru tangle with Kuno near Saito’s village, Kagura wakes to engage in a passionate morning tryst with Byakuya and Naraku. Mid-way through the act, Naraku’s illness, caused by the Shikon jewel, rears its ugly head with horrifying results. Sex scene: Naraku/Kagura/Byakuya.

 

**(Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – Constant)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp8ZyZ4a2AA** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp8ZyZ4a2AA)

            In the underground chamber beneath Naraku’s island castle, Kagura awoke feeling very warm and comfortable, her body still sandwiched between Naraku’s and Byakuya’s upon the oni lord’s canopy-veiled bed of transmutated demonic flesh.  Their big, male bodies were nice and solid against her back and front, supplying her with plenty of heat despite the thinness of the pseudo-satin sheet covering them.  Her breathing becoming quicker and more intentional as she came into consciousness, she opened her ruby eyes to find Naraku already awake in front of her.

            “Good morning,” Naraku spoke softly to Kagura.  He propped his head up on a muscular arm to look down at her, his red eyes gimlet with satisfaction in the dimly-lit atmosphere of the underground resurrection chamber turned bedroom and perverse love nest.  “Did you sleep well?”

            Kagura saw no reason to lie.  She knew that being so close to her, Naraku could probably read her thoughts anyway.  “Yes,” she replied honestly.  “What time is it?”

            “A bit before noon,” Naraku said.  “Though of course, you can’t tell by the sun from down here.”

            Pushing Byakuya away from her gently so as not to wake him, Kagura rolled onto her back and extended her arms above her head, arching her spine and flexing her shoulders to stretch with a sultry yawn.  Inadvertently, she thrust her generous breasts up and out toward the bed canopy above, practically inviting Naraku for a grope.  The oni lord seized the opportunity gladly, planting his left hand onto her flat stomach and sliding it up to cup it underneath her right breast.  He squeezed possessively, eliciting a sudden gasp from his beautiful female incarnation.

            “This feels _good_ , doesn’t it?” Naraku asked to Kagura, massaging her ample breast in gentle circles and lightly pinching its rosy nipple.  “You’re such an _erogenous_ woman, now.”

            “Thanks to _you_ ,” Kagura seethed, increasingly angry and increasingly _aroused_ at the same time.  She knew that Naraku had engineered her body, maybe even her _mind_ to be extra inclined and receptive to sexual activity.  His act of activating her ovaries, therefore initiating their production of their sex hormones, had put that inclination into full effect.  She covered Naraku’s hand with one of her own, actually _pulling it_ into her breast so as to increase the erotic sensation.  Glancing at her creator’s mouth, she licked her glossy red lips with a bat of her tongue, and her ruby eyes grew dark with desire.  “Kiss me,” she ordered.

            Up to this point, Naraku had been wearing one of his usual evil smiles.  Now, that smile faded suddenly, his expression becoming like that of any man who had just received a blatant sexual proposition from a _goddess_ like Kagura: one of complete, undivided attention.  He lowered his head to Kagura’s and took her lips with his, kissing her as she demanded.  The female youkai opened her mouth readily, thrusting her tongue out to meet her creator’s and mimic the act she fully intended to perform with the rest of her body.  Maintaining the kiss, she rolled back onto her left side so that she faced Naraku head-on, slipping her right thigh up and over his left hip to begin pumping her belly against his swelling cock.

            Naraku growled into Kagura’s mouth, breaking the kiss with a gasp.  For him, the pleasure was undeniable.  Not only was his wind witch sexually powerful by his design, she was increasingly _confident_ , as well.  She was beginning to grasp the effect she could have on a man.  He moved his left hand from her breast and used it to grip at her luscious ass, pulling her against him to meet her thrusts with his own.  Soon, he was at full erection, his cock long, thick and pulsing between his stomach and hers.

            Byakuya woke to the sensation of the bed shifting gently by Naraku and Kagura’s movements, the sound of their labored, pleasured breathing.  He pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked to his left to see Kagura grinding shamelessly on Naraku.  The male wind demon glanced underneath the sheet covering the three of them to see her lovely rear deformed by the oni lord’s hard, five-fingered grip, its perfect cheeks clenching and unclenching with each thrust she delivered to his hips.  The scent of Kagura’s arousal wrought the greatest effect on Byakuya, flowing up his nose and down into his lungs to weave its way into his very blood, getting him ready for her in short order.

            Naraku tilted his head back to offer his neck to Kagura, inviting her to lick and kiss as she pleased.  Both he and she knew that she couldn’t kill him, even if she used direct access to his throat to do anything _but_ kiss it.  Therefore, she accepted his invitation at its face value, closing in to begin licking and kissing, lapping and sucking at his throat as he wanted.  Even as she indulged herself and him, she swore that her chance to kill him once and for all would come yet.

            Beneath the bed sheet, Byakuya took hold of his cock, stroking himself to the sight of his master and his female reflection making slow, easy love. They enjoyed a physical love that was tainted and twisted with hatred, made darkly beautiful because of it.  Hard and huge already, pre-cum oozed out of him as he thrust into his fist.  His movements of self-gratification got Naraku’s attention.  “Look,” Naraku whispered to Kagura, gesturing at Byakuya with his eyes.  “Byakuya is awake, as well.  And he is _ready_.”

            Kagura glanced over her shoulder to regard her male reflection with a sultry raised eyebrow.  She shoved the bedsheet covering herself, Byakuya and Naraku away, exposing their hot bodies to the relatively-cooler air.  She caught sight of Byakuya’s big, beautiful cock as the male wind demon pumped it in his fist, and she turned away from Naraku to face him directly.

            Byakuya trembled upon the bed as Kagura pried herself away from Naraku to spread her thighs over his hips and straddle him.  She reached down to grasp both of his wrists, causing his cock to spring back against his firm lower abdomen with an audible _thwap_ as she forced both of his hands above his head, planting them onto the pillow his head rested upon.  “You don’t move your hands until I say,” she ordered to him, to which he could only gulp and nod in agreement.

            Naraku watched with visible approval as Kagura began to explore Byakuya’s body with her slender hands, tracing the raw, muscled angles of his chest and abdomen with her palms and fingers.  Between her thighs, the wind witch’s pussy pulsed with need, already sopping with her juicy female cream.  She adjusted her position atop her wind demon twin to press her sex down onto his cock, beginning to grind herself back and forth along its meaty length.  Bracing her hands on his firm abdomen, she used his entire body as a saddle-like sex toy with which to masturbate.  Her pussy left a glistening trail of hot female fluid upon him, lubricating the intimate friction so that only the most delicious sensation resulted.

            Kagura could feel Byakuya’s heart beating through his cock, a potent, rhythmic pulse of cardiovascular circulation that stimulated the swollen, hooded pearl of her clit.  Her pussy flooded over with her juices at the sensation, it vibrant pink depth aching to be stretched and filled, and she knew that just grinding on him wouldn’t satisfy her for long.  She raised her hips, slipping a hand down between her body and his to lift his cock away from his stomach so that it pointed directly up at her sex, and she eased herself down so that her pussy’s delicate outer petals began to spread open around his big, male crown.

            _Ba-bump.  Ba-bump.  Ba-bump._ Byakuya’s demonic heart thundered in his tapered ears, beating with raw excitement at the prospect of having Kagura again.  His already pale knuckles turned completely white as he clenched his fists upon the red satin pillow beneath his head, keeping them there as the sexy wind witch had ordered.  Kagura smiled down at him, relishing in her sexual power over him, and she rubbed his massive cockhead back and forth through her pussy’s dripping labial flesh.  She then lowered her hips downward, closing her ruby eyes in honest pleasure as she accepted him into her body.

            The smooth, bulbous head of Byakuya’s cock pushed Kagura’s silky pink pussy petals far apart as it bore into the sacred female orifice they protected.  Its flared rim slipped underneath her throbbing clit with a silent, tangible _pop_ and it began to spread her open on the inside.  Feeling her vagina opening up, the lusting wind witch gave herself over to gravity fully, taking inch after inch of her male reflection’s big cock into her until all eleven of it pulsed within her sheath, her hairless mons kissing against his equally hairless base.  His sheer length allowed him to reach her womb with ease, his cock filling the full depth of her and beating inside her like a monstrous, phallic second heart.

            Holding still for a moment, Kagura opened her eyes to look down at Byakuya as he twitched inside her.  Brushing a hand over his chest, she studied him for his beauty, noting the perfect complexion of his smooth, pale skin and the way his hair gathered upon his pillow in a glossy black pool beneath his head.  She contemplated him and herself for the sensations coursing through them and imagined the scandalous scene they presented.  Even then, with the head of her male reflection’s cock pushing right up against her cervix, she was still coming to terms with her own sexuality. 

            In the physical sense, Kagura was a very attractive humanoid female, but she knew that with his depraved imagination, Naraku could have created her as _anything_ else.  Upon her first ‘birth,’ he could have made her as a hulking beast like Goshinki, or a smaller, even more grotesque serpent/insect monster like Kageromaru.   Regardless of what form he could have given her, the knowledge he could have imparted to her upon her birth was limited to his own, thoroughly male mindset.

            All of Kagura’s memories and knowledge, besides that which she gained between her first birth and first death, came from Naraku.  In terms of sexual knowledge, all she knew came from Naraku’s male point of view.  With her spirit implanted into a new, second female body much like her first, other than some sexy ‘enhancement’ to her breasts, her ass, and other areas, she had a general idea of what to do with a man only by what she ‘remembered’ women doing to Naraku, back when he went by the name _Onigumo_.  Now, with Byakuya balls deep in her, she had to ask herself: ‘ _Do I like being a woman?_ ’

            And the answer was an emphatic ‘ _YES!_ ’  Kagura moved her hand from Byakuya’s chest and pressed it to her lower belly, envisioning his column of hard male flesh pulsing against her inner muscles, kissing her very core.  She knew that men wanted what he was getting at that very moment, and with the body of a woman, she knew that she now had the ability, the _power_ to provide it herself.  The female wind demon lifted herself up her male twin’s cock by a single inch, feeling it shifting inside her, then sank back down with a generously lubricated _gush_.

            Byakuya groaned softly and Kagura gasped as he touched her womb again.  Reaching forward to take hold of his wrists as he continued to clench on his pillow, she hushed to him: “Touch me now.  _Feel_ me.”

            Leaning over Byakuya to lay down atop him and cover his upper body with her own, Kagura guided the male wind demon’s hands to her waist, encouraging him to explore her body.  He took the opportunity gladly, running his hands up and down her bare back, then down over her shapely thighs.  He slid his hands back up to grope possessively at her perfect ass and she practically _giggled_ in pleasure, a sultry, sexy giggle that took his breath.

            Kagura pushed herself up onto her arms so that she could look down into Byakuya’s cobalt blue eyes as she began to ride him, pumping her hips with smooth, shallow, yet thoroughly pleasurable strokes that shifted his cock back and forth within her.  The male wind demon kept her gaze and began to move beneath her, grasping her waist and lifting his hips upward to meet hers.  They both relished in their bodies’ tight fit, Naraku’s twisted, sexual blessing at work.

            Beside Kagura and Byakuya, Naraku stroked his cock to the sight of his incarnations moving together, gliding his fist up and down his great, eleven-inch length to lubricate himself with his own pre-cum.  His balls growing tense in their hairless sac as he built his pleasure, he felt Magatsuhi speak into his mind.  _“Mmm…Naraku.  They are so beautiful together,”_ the spectral demon said.  _“I can see why you made Byakuya.  Without resurrecting Kagura outright, you wanted another sexy wind demon to look at and fuck with.  Now, you have two, and your balls are fucking throbbing for them.  As good as Kagura looks when doing Byakuya, though, imagine her with Sesshomaru, or Kohaku, or even InuYasha!”_

            Naraku’s inhuman red eyes darkened with desire as Kagura took Byakuya’s lips in a deep, passionate kiss, then sat upright atop him, beginning to fuck him harder and faster.  Her large breasts bounced beautifully with her movements.  The oni lord felt his demonic prostate give an urgent pulse of approaching orgasm, his seed beginning to churn inside his balls.  His cock pulsed in his fist, jerking with his heartbeat and weeping glob after glob of pre-cum for him to see.  As tempting as it was to jack himself off and unleash his seed all over his own face and chest, he knew of a better place to spend himself.

            Kagura stilled atop Byakuya as she saw Naraku move from his place beside them.  She looked at him directly with visible suspicion, watching him closely as he rose to his knees and maneuvered himself upon the bed to place himself directly behind her, between Byakuya’s legs.  Fisting his cock with one hand, Naraku placed the other on Kagura’s back, directly over the spider-shaped brand there, and pushed her forward to lay her down atop Byakuya again.  “Byakuya,” the oni lord ordered, continuing to pump his cock to keep it at its maximum size and hardness.  “Spread Kagura open.  Give me her ass.”

            Byakuya tensed in discomfort at the idea of Naraku taking, _violating_ Kagura anally, the same violation he’d experienced the night before.  Naraku had endowed himself with a monstrous cock and to Byakuya, the thing had felt like a very thick rod of hot, hard steel plowing in and out of him, to say nothing of the pulsating semen _explosion_ that followed.  He hardly wanted Kagura to feel such things, too.

            Kagura looked down at Byakuya and saw the concern on his face.  Smiling in bold defiance of whatever pain was to come, she rewarded her twin’s empathy with a kiss to his lips, followed by another, more symbolically thankful one to his smooth forehead.  “Do it,” she said to him, placing her hands on the bed to either side of his head to brace herself for the forbidden penetration.

            Hesitantly, Byakuya spread the cheeks of Kagura’s rear far apart, exposing the clean, rosy pink excretory orifice they concealed.  Little more than an inch above her cock-filled pussy, Naraku could see Kagura’s beautiful hole twitching, almost _winking_ by the contractions of her most secret female muscles.  Giving Kagura much more care than he’d shown Byakuya the night before, Naraku took a long, thick male finger into his mouth and thoroughly coated it with his saliva, retracting it and guiding it down to the wind witch’s ass.

            Kagura grew very still, almost trembling as Naraku penetrated her with his finger, working it deeper and deeper into her.  All the while, Byakuya continued to throb in her cunt, each pulse of his heartbeat thudding against her inner muscles and gently nudging her womb.  The male wind demon’s cock and Naraku’s finger provided her with a two-pronged assault of sensation that had her creaming over with a fresh flood of female lubrication, and she spread her knees further apart on the bed to lower herself all the way down onto her male twin, really _grinding_ her cervix down against his big male head to amplify the pleasure/pain as much as possible.

            Naraku added a second finger to Kagura’s ass, working it and the first against the wind witch’s anal walls to stretch her out, get her ready.  After almost a full minute of such uncharacteristically thoughtful preparation, Kagura could take no more and she tossed her messy ebony mane over a shoulder, turning her head to glare at Naraku over the opposite one.  “Enough.  Give it to me!” she ordered to her dark master.

            Naraku grinned at Kagura’s forthcoming attitude.  As much as he enjoyed raping and possibly killing a woman afterward, such a woman’s consent was satisfying to him nonetheless.  “As you wish,” he acquiesced, pulling his fingers out of the wind witch’s ass and wrapping that freed hand around his cock to hold it steady.  He leaned over Kagura from behind, pressing the head of his monster cock to her delicate female asshole and balancing his weight onto his other arm to begin easing into her.

            Looking straight ahead of her again, Kagura closed her eyes, convulsing in bare-toothed ecstasy as Naraku filled her ass with his cock.  The huge male head of it pushed her anal walls far apart, reaching deep into her to make way for the thick shaft behind it.  Inch after hot, meaty inch of him disappeared into her until his big, heavy balls came to rest against her perineum.  His cock’s head throbbed brutally against the first bend in her colon, straining against it as if to permanently shove it deeper into her.  Now, with Byakuya in her pussy and Naraku in her ass, she felt incredibly full, utterly _packed_ with their big, hard demon cocks.  She imagined that once they came inside her, her actual internal anatomy notwithstanding, their cum would could running out of her _ears_.

            Naraku pulled out of Kagura’s ass by a single, experimental inch, giving up a sinister chuckle as he felt the searing hot interior of it slide over his thickly-veined length.  He eased back in slowly, sneering with the pleasure; not only was Kagura incredibly tight for him, he could feel the thick, solid length of Byakuya’s cock grinding against his through the thin membrane of female tissue that separated the wind witch’s ass from her pussy.  Together, he and Byakuya had just double-penetrated their second woman within 24 hours.

            This fact was not lost on Byakuya.  The male wind demon knew that after the nightmarish ordeal at Sayaka’s shrine, he was a rapist to ten women (eleven, if the acts he and Naraku had performed on Kagura earlier constituted rape) and of those, he was an accessory to the murder of nine.  Naraku had instigated it all and under his control or not, Byakuya had participated.  Thus, he felt terrible guilt.  His sexual ‘reconciliation’ with the ultra-horny Sayaka in the castle bath earlier had made him feel better, both physically and emotionally, but the guilt was still there.  Already, Naraku had promised him exclusive sexual access to Sayaka, so by giving him access to Kagura, as well, Byakuya felt the depraved oni lord was trying to placate him in order to ensure his continued cooperation with his evil plans going forward.  He was still useful to Naraku; if he wasn’t, he knew he’d already be dead.

            Kagura opened her ruby eyes to gaze through the billowing silk of the bed’s canopy in front of her as Naraku began to fuck her more deeply.  Just as Byakuya had felt the night before, the oni lord’s cock was as a length of very hot, hard _steel_ in her ass, steel cloaked in vein-filled flesh.  The broad head of it pumped back and forth to batter her anal walls apart on the way in and leave them to quiver closed on the way out, over and over.  His musclebound body was large, heavy, and extremely powerful behind her and each thrust he delivered into her ass rocked her atop Byakuya.  God help her, her pleasure began to grow, and she gave up an honest, unrestrained _moan_ that was music to Naraku’s ears.

            Noticing that Byakuya wasn’t moving inside her as Naraku was, Kagura looked down at her handsome, big-dicked twin and saw the guilt in his eyes.  Her lusty expression, induced by her first anal experience in either of her lives, softened with understanding.  Moved that he cared that much about her already, she cupped a hand to his face, stroking a thumb over his cheek.  “It’s okay,” she assured to him.  “Fuck me.  _Enjoy_ me, because I’m enjoying _you_.”

            Kagura closed her knees together on the bed slightly to raise herself up Byakuya’s cock.  She’d been straddling him with her thighs spread out at beyond a 60-degree angle, so she closed them to about 45 to lift her hips and give him room to move.  Beneath her, he began to move as she wanted, grasping her slender waist carefully and lifting his hips to meet hers as Naraku thrust against her from behind.  He matched his rhythm to his master’s and the two males began to sheath and withdraw their big cocks in and out of Kagura’s body in good synchronization.

            Total ecstasy ravaged Kagura’s mind.  Her body shook, her breasts quivered, and her heart pounded by the combined power of Naraku and Byakuya’s hard thrusts.  They struck deep into her to touch her innermost flesh, nailing her colon and her cervix at once.  “ _Yes…”_ she praised to her dark lovers with wide, ruby eyes, slowly working up the breath to speak her praise more loudly.  “Oh, _fuck, YES! **FUCK ME!** ”_

            Naraku _snarled_ at the sound of Kagura begging for it and gave her perfect ass a hard, full-palmed _slap,_ punctuating his thrusts with another, then another still.The cock-filled wind witch shrieked from the punishment, the sudden pain elevating her pleasure, and she gyrated her hips to thrust herself back and down onto Naraku and Byakuya, taking them as deep as her body would allow.  His hand leaving a large, angry red palm print on her pale rear, Naraku moved his other hand from her opposite hip and wove it into her long, black hair, pulling tight to jerk her head sharply backward.

            “You beautiful slut…you _love_ this, don’t you?” Naraku asked of Kagura, pulling her head back far enough to speak directly into one of her lovely, tapered ears.  “You _love_ being used.  In bed or in battle, _this_ is your element.”

            Kagura scowled, fighting against Naraku’s grip on her hair to turn her head and glare at him again.  Her breath came as hard pants as he and Byakuya continued to fuck her.  “Who’s the _real_ slut, here?” she asked in vicious rhetoric.  “The slut, or the one that made her?”

            Naraku laughed in evil amusement and maintained his grip on Kagura’s hair to give her ass one final slap with his other hand.  Fucking her ass without missing a beat, he then moved his hand from her ass to place it flat against her back, shifting it a few inches to the left of her spine to line it up with her heart.  His inhuman red eyes glowing as he summoned his dark magic about him, his hand seemed to ‘phase’ out of existence, becoming almost completely transparent.  It no longer collided with solid matter as normal.

            Kagura’s breath hitched, her eyes widening at the alien sensation of Naraku’s ghostly hand _entering_ her chest from behind.  His fingers passed through skin, muscle, bone, and lung tissue unimpeded to wrap around her beating heart.  The innermost circumference of his grip, made up of his palm and the palm-facing sides of his thumb and fingers, phased back into existence at a depth of a fraction of a millimeter.  This enabled him to hold Kagura’s heart without interfering with anything else in her body.

            Naraku held Kagura’s heart in his hand with utmost care, savoring every precious beat of it.  It pounded for him by both her pleasure and her fear and he squeezed ever so slightly, not to cause her an overt amount of pain, but to emphasize to her that literally and figuratively, her life was in his hand.  Her heartbeat was a powerful, rapid ­ _ba-bump, ba-bump_ in his palm and he felt his own heart speeding up to match as orgasm threatened him.

            Beneath Kagura, Byakuya neared orgasm as well.  His cock throbbed potently against her pussy’s creaming pink interior, the head of it flaring wide and jabbing deep against her womb again and again.  His balls drew up tightly to his body, their liquid contents beginning to move as his hot, pumping demonic prostate siphoned the stuff out.  With each lubricated stroke of his cock into Kagura’s cunt, the pressure built and built until he teetered on the very edge of climax, feeling as if he teetered on the edge of life itself.

            Between Kagura, Naraku, and Byakuya, Naraku finished first, getting himself off with a series of shallow, frenzied thrusts into the wind witch’s ass.  His balls tightened, his cock jerked, and thick wads of hot, creamy cum burst out of him inside her, painting the walls of her colon white and flooding her entire anal cavity it in explosive fashion.  For the first few, most powerful spurts, the orgasming oni lord held himself balls-deep in her to plant his seed as deep as possible, then began to stroke back and forth, using her inner walls to milk himself for all he was worth.

            The repeating pulsations in Naraku’s cock, hardly dulled by the thin membrane of Kagura’s flesh separating the two of them, set Byakuya off next.  “ _Nnngh…nnngh!  Kagura!_ ” he cried to her, arching his spine and tossing his head back against his pillow as his pleasure took him.  With savage intensity, he gripped her waist tight and bucked his hips against up against hers over and over, then held himself with his hairless male base buried right up against her clit as he began to shoot inside her.  The head of his cock swelled to a new, frightening volume against her cervix and his seed pumped right through it, filling her womb from the bottom up in a boiling flood that eventually breached into her hungry fallopian tubes.

            At this point, Kagura felt utterly _bombarded_ by sensation.  On one hand, there was pain, with Naraku pulling on her hair and gripping at her heart, the palm-print he’d left on one side of her rear stinging on and on.  Then, on the other hand, there was _pleasure , _with Naraku and Byakuya’s cock pulsing at their absolute maximum size and hardness, their creamy seed blasting out of them to drench and drown her insides.  She could _feel_ their cum gushing around inside her, billions of demonic sperm making a desperate dash for her egg.  Clenching her teeth and thrashing her head from side to side, Kagura truly _feared_ the orgasm crashing down on her, and could do nothing but _scream_ as it detonated in her blood.

            Naraku felt Kagura’s heart hammering in his palm, the rhythm of a woman’s orgasm, and he listened closely to her cries, indulging himself in sexual victory.  Even if she hated him, he knew (and he knew that _she_ knew) that he could bring her a level of pleasure she’d never imagined before and might never achieve again. Then, a strange pulse of sensation rocked him, and it was not one of ejaculation.

            The pulse began deep within him at the root of his cock and did not travel out of him into Kagura, but _up_ into his abdomen, then his chest, moving through his neck and up into his head to culminate in a sudden _lightning_ _bolt_ of terrible pain that wracked the entire forward quarter of his brain.  All over his body beneath his muscle-filled skin, his veins swelled up and out to stand in stark profile, pulsing hideously in time with his increasingly-erratic heartbeat.  Swiftly, he released Kagura’s heart and removed his partially-ghosted hand from her chest just in time to see his fingers twist in strange, independent directions, his hand _breaking open_ to begin spewing raw, ink-black demon essence all over the bed and Kagura’s back.

            Still reeling from her climax and given continued pleasure from size and hardness of the cocks in her and the semen they spewed, Kagura felt something hot and wet splatter onto her back.  She thought of Naraku: _Is that asshole coming on my back?_  She felt him release her hair and she turned her head to curse at him when she saw the state he was in.  Hot from orgasm, her blood cooled abruptly in her veins and her flesh crawled as she watched Naraku’s entire left arm come apart at the seams, as if every muscle and tendon in it had been under some incredible tension that they could no longer withstand.

            Howling in mounting agony, Naraku pulled out of Kagura’s ass, a heavy flood of his cum following him out of her.  The skin of his left arm flayed open and his muscles broke from their ligaments to flail wildly in all different directions, the bones they left uncovered falling limp without their support.  Another ‘pulse’ hit the oni lord and he stumbled backward away from the bed on which Kagura and Byakuya still lay.  Kagura wasted no time in dismounting from Byakuya, paying no mind to the large amounts of his semen gushing out of her pussy and drooling down her inner thighs.  She leapt off the bed to watch Naraku from a safer distance and Byakuya did the same, his cock rapidly going soft from the horror show unfolding in front of him and his female twin.

            The next pulse of Naraku’s inside-out disintegration followed the path of the first, beginning in his groin and shooting upward into his head.  This time, one whole side of his head _erupted_ outward, as if his skull was vomiting up his own brain.  His eyes widened and his mouth fell agape, a gout of ink-black blood pouring out of it.  Then, the entire chamber that Naraku, Kagura, and Byakuya stood in began to tremble; the chamber had been constructed by Naraku using his dark powers and now, he was in a state of tremendous physical upheaval.

            For his own part, Byakuya recognized the nature of Naraku’s ‘condition.’  His master’s Shikon-induced illness had relapsed and _violently_ so.  And so soon after Sayaka had healed him!  Hurriedly, he grabbed both his clothes and Kagura’s from the stone floor around the bed and shoved them all under one arm, using his free hand to grab at one of Kagura’s wrists.  “Come on!” he shouted to her over the sound of Naraku’s screams.

            Watching Naraku’s body betray him with morbid curiosity, Kagura allowed Byakuya to guide her.  He took them up the curved wall of the spherical resurrection/birthing chamber to the opening that led out into the castle’s underground labyrinth, then navigated through the tunnels beyond to make for the ladder that connected the labyrinth to the more ‘normal’ castle den above.  Once there, Byakuya released Kagura’s wrist and urged her toward the ladder.  “You first!” he said tersely to her before he turned to peer into the darkness behind them, feeling the stone floor of the labyrinth begin to shake, as well.

            Still nude and dripping cum from the hard fuck she’d gotten from Naraku and Byakuya, Kagura climbed the ladder without hesitation, reaching the top and throwing open the trap door she found there.  She leapt through and found herself in Naraku’s shoji den.  Byakuya followed her a few seconds later and the two wind demons scrambled out of the den, into the nearby hallway as the hardwood floor buckled beneath them, swallowed up by a rapidly-expanding sinkhole.

            ‘ _Sayaka!’_ Byakuya thought with serious concern.  The bedroom he’d left her in wasn’t too far from Naraku’s den and he feared that she could fall into the sinkhole, as well.  Dropping his clothes and Kagura’s where he stood, he dashed through the hall to make his way to Sayaka’s bedroom, barging past the two skeleton warriors guarding it and throwing its shoji door open.

            Sleeping up to this point, Sayaka came awake from the racket of the entire castle’s floor, walls, and ceiling shaking around her.  As nude as Byakuya, she sat bolt upright on her futon to see him reaching for her.  The male wind demon scooped her up into his arms and exited the bedroom for the hallway.  “Kagura!” he shouted over the sound of a sizable part of the castle collapsing outright.  “This way!”

            With Sayaka in his arms, Byakuya turned and made for the castle’s main entrance/exit.  Kagura caught up to them quickly and the three of them escaped the castle in time to see a major part of its roof sink far inward with a terrible _crash_.  A plume of dust shot out of the castle’s entrance, driven by the sudden change in air pressure inside.

            “What the _fuck_ is going _on?_ ” Sayaka cursed wildly, struggling in Byakuya’s arms.  “Put me down!”

            Byakuya set Sayaka onto her feet as she demanded and the miko stepped back away from him and Kagura.  She was in a state of only half-wakefulness, but she could feel herself rapidly coming fully lucid by the bite of the chilly sea air on her bare skin.  Looking at Byakuya first, she looked at Kagura and realized that she didn’t recognize the female wind demon.  “And who the fuck are _you?_ ”  Next, Sayaka noticed that all three of them were devoid of clothing.  “And why the fuck are the two of you _nak –_ actually, nevermind.  I think I can _guess_.”

            Swallowing thickly in embarrassment, Byakuya looked between Sayaka and Kagura and decided to introduce them to each other.  “Kagura, this is Sayaka, a miko from along the eastern coast.  Sayaka, this is Kagura.  I guess you could call her…my sister.”

            Sayaka blinked at Byakuya in disbelief.  “You were fucking your _sister?_ ”

            “Maybe ‘sister’ is the wrong word,” Kagura said to Sayaka with some venom at the miko’s accusation.  “I am him, and he is me.  Except for our gender, we are the same.”

            Byakuya glanced at the ground beneath him.  “The shaking has stopped,” he said to Kagura and Sayaka.  The island that Naraku had built his castle on wasn’t falling apart as the castle itself had, and he and Kagura were still alive, so Byakuya reasoned that the evil oni lord was, as well.  ‘ _Naraku!’_ he called telepathically, clearing his thoughts so as to ‘listen’ for an answer.  ‘ _Naraku, are you there?_ ’

            Naraku’s reply came in dissonant notes, as if his mind was scrambled by some unseen interference.  It was the sound of great pain.  ‘ _Sayaka_.  _Bring Sayaka to me, now.’_

            Byakuya looked to Sayaka, dreading what was to come for her.  “It’s Naraku,” he said to her.  “He’s calling for you.”

            Sayaka’s lovely golden eyes narrowed – she understood immediately that Naraku needed another infusion of her reiki.  The sudden disintegration of part of his castle was a sign of that need.  “Again?  So _soon?_ ” she asked of Byakuya.  “I just got here.  I’ve barely had any time to recuperate from last time.”

            “I know.  I’m sorry,” Byakuya apologized to Sayaka, knowing his apology was of little comfort to her.

            “This is going to _kill_ me, eventually,” Sayaka predicted grimly.  “If I want to live, and if you want me to live long enough to have our baby, then we need to _figure this shit out!_ ”

            Kagura looked at Sayaka, then at her flat stomach.  _Baby._   The female wind demon repeated the word in her mind, grasping its significance.  The night before, Naraku himself had boasted to her about Byakuya’s ability to impregnate a woman, just before he made him fuck her.  Sayaka was that woman.  Right then, so soon after being nailed by Naraku and Byakuya at once, Kagura knew she still had some of her male reflection’s cum inside her womb, in addition to her master’s in her ass.  She could feel the power in Byakuya’s seed, so if it could get Sayaka pregnant, what was preventing it from doing the same to _her?_ She could only speculate, but one certainty out of everything was that Naraku’s fortress was _not_ a good environment for a woman to bring a child into.  One way or another, Sayaka was in terrible danger and Kagura sympathized.

            A group of skeleton soldiers approached Byakuya, Kagura, and Sayaka as they stood outside Naraku’s partially-collapsed castle.  They extended their bony hands toward Sayaka, as if to drag her off, and Byakuya slapped them away with a sneer.  To show solidarity with her twin and the woman who would carry his child, Kagura placed herself between Sayaka and a group of skeletons advancing on her from a different direction, protecting her in the same way.  Here, the wind sorceress became acutely aware of her unarmed state.  Right then, she would have _loved_ to have had her enchanted fan.

            Sayaka’s eyes widened at the sight of Kagura shielding her from Naraku’s skeletons.  “You, Kagura,” she began with a hush.  “You’d protect me, too?”

            Glancing over a shoulder at Sayaka, Kagura replied: “As far as ‘figuring this shit out’ goes, we’re in this ‘shit’ _together_.”

            “ _We_ will be the ones to show Sayaka back in,” Byakuya intoned to Naraku’s skeletons, referring to himself and Kagura.  “Back off.”

            The skeletons pulled back as Byakuya ordered, forming themselves into two neat ranks, one to either side of the castle’s entrance.  They stood as a path for him, Kagura, and Sayaka to follow.  Their deference to Byakuya was an illusion though, an illusion that Byakuya was fully aware of.  He and Kagura could escort Sayaka back inside in a polite, orderly fashion, or the skeletons could _drag her_.  His thoughts echoing Kagura’s, he knew there could be no true freedom for any of them as long as they were still bound to Naraku.

 

**-To be continued-**


	18. Relapse - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naraku uses Sayaka to heal himself of his Shikon illness’ relapse.  Kagura bears witness to the horrifying act, learning of her master’s dire condition and the threat it poses to her own life and Byakuya’s.  Naraku then gives Kagura and Byakuya their orders: to capture Kikyo and bring her to him, so that he may use her as he does Sayaka…

**(Continued from pt. 1)**

            The skeletons pulled back as Byakuya ordered, forming themselves into two neat ranks, one to either side of the castle’s entrance.  They stood as a path for him, Kagura, and Sayaka to follow.  Their deference was an illusion though, an illusion that he was fully aware of.  He and Kagura could escort Sayaka back inside in a polite, orderly fashion, or the skeletons could _drag her_.  His thoughts echoing Kagura’s, he knew there could be no true freedom for any of them as long as they were still bound to Naraku.

**(Soundtrack: Demons & Wizards – Dorian)**

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMOXaSOBPR4>

            Byakuya turned and looked down at Sayaka, gesturing his head toward the castle.  “Come on.  Let’s at least get our clothes back on.”

            Sayaka agreed.  She, Byakuya and Kagura were all stark naked and the salty ocean air outside the castle was uncomfortably cold.  Staying close to the two wind demons in case one of the skeleton soldiers made a grab at her, she followed them inside the partially-collapsed castle, eyeing the ceiling carefully to look out for any sections that appeared on the verge of falling.  Together, they retread the path they had fled the castle by, soon encountering a section of shoji hallway that had collapsed during Naraku’s ‘relapse.’

            By Naraku’s dark magic, the debris blocking the hallway lifted and reassembled into its previous, undamaged structure with eerie precision.  Their path cleared, Byakuya, Kagura and Sayaka first came upon the bedroom Sayaka had been sleeping in.  Byakuya ducked inside and retrieved the red hakama and white haori he used the castle’s enchanted loom to make for Sayaka earlier.  The miko prostitute accepted them from him and slipped into them gladly.  Next, Byakuya came upon Kagura’s clothes and his own where he had dropped them a few minutes earlier.  Fortunately, they had escaped damage from the castle ceiling’s collapse and he handed Kagura hers first, then took up his own.

            Fully dressed again, Byakuya, Kagura, and Sayaka arrived at Naraku’s den and entered with caution.  Most of the wooden floor had given way to a yawning sinkhole of dust-filtered blackness.  Holding onto the frame of the den’s shoji doorway for support, Byakuya peered into the pit and leapt back when a tendril of ink-black demon flesh, dripping with some vile fluid, shot out from the darkness and reached high to wrap around one of the ceiling’s rafters.  Several more tendrils followed, pulling taut as they began to _lift_ something out of the darkness.

            Kagura felt her stomach churn as Naraku used his hideous tentacles to pull himself out of the pit and into her sight.  He had divested himself of most of his body; now, he was just a sable-maned head grafted onto a sickly-looking collection of gushing, pumping internal organs and assorted other demonic body parts.  She had seen him in such a state only once before, the time when his hanyou ‘day of weakness’ came.  Back then, the evil oni lord seemed to have temporarily lost the ability to maintain his body in a humanoid form, letting it regress into its ‘true’ state - that of hundreds of lesser youkai conflated into one, awful whole, devouring and spawning one another over and over without end.

            Kagura had to ask herself: was today simply another one of Naraku’s days of weakness, or was it something else, something _worse?_ She felt she would soon find out.

            Stabilizing himself in his web of tentacles, Naraku looked at Kagura, noting the revulsion upon her face.  He had wanted to conceal his condition from her, but he knew it would have been difficult in the long run; through the spiritual link they shared, she would eventually be able to _feel_ something was wrong.  He then looked to Sayaka, his red eyes sullen and bloodshot with pain.  “Miko.  Come to me,” he ordered.

            Broken wooden planking rose from the darkness of the pit beneath Naraku to assemble into a narrow path that bridged the pit’s ragged edge with Naraku’s central position.  Sayaka looked at the path, then into Naraku’s eyes, regarding him with bristling hostility.  This was her first encounter with him since he had Byakuya abduct her from her shrine.  He had personally raped her and her junior priestesses, then murdered her junior priestesses right in front of her.  He didn’t just force her to watch, he forced her to really _experience_ it in visual, aural, and mental terms.  Right then, the dying screams of those young, beautiful women, ripping directly into her mind, were still loud and clear to her.

            Sayaka wanted very badly to kill Naraku, to fucking _kill him!_   She wanted revenge for herself, her women, and anyone else he had hurt during his abomination of a life.  ‘Naraku’ was an old name among miko – the tale of how he had set the miko Kikyo and her hanyou lover, InuYasha, against each other had spread far and wide throughout Japan in the decades since.  His name was synonymous with evil and sin, making him the natural enemy of all miko, even if she herself indulged in sexual sin to support her shrine, as well as to simply please herself.  But Sayaka knew that her most effective weapon against Naraku, her purifying power, was exactly what he needed to survive.  Consequently, she knew that to try and attack him while she stood in the symbolic center of his power would be suicidal at best.       

            Swallowing her anger, Sayaka turned and looked at Byakuya and Kagura, searching their eyes for some kind of guidance.  Nominally, the two wind demons were Naraku’s servants, but they didn’t seem to be _happy_ servants of their master’s dark will.  They were willing to protect her however they could, and they were incredibly beautiful, to boot.  Byakuya was already a _great_ fuck and she imagined that Kagura could be persuaded to fool around with her, another woman.  Moreover, she fully intended to hold Byakuya to his responsibility of helping her raise their baby, if she lived long enough to have it.  If Naraku died, so would he and Kagura, and if she somehow escaped with her life in the end, she would be left alone with her child.  And in that event, she would have nowhere to go: she suspected that not only did Naraku desecrate her shrine, he had destroyed her whole village, as well.

            Byakuya gave Sayaka an affirmative nod and the miko resolved to give Naraku what he wanted for the moment and bide her time.  She returned her attention to him and began to approach him, stepping along the narrow path of magically-bonded planks with care.  Then, she began to grow thoughtful.  “You know, I’m a miko,” she said to Naraku with a bitter, cynical laugh, stating her occupation aloud to build a frame of reference.  “I fight demons, exorcise haunted houses, and other miko shit.  You are just about the greatest, most _evil_ enemy a miko could ever hope to fight, so if you came to me directly and said: ‘Sayaka-sama, I’m dying.  Please purify me,’ then I would have said: ‘Fuck you, go fucking _die_.’”

            Even in his malformed state, Naraku managed a smile.  “Naturally,” he said to Sayaka.  Behind Sayaka, Kagura listened closely.  She paid special attention at the miko’s mention of the word ‘dying.’  She then began to grasp the nature of Naraku’s condition – he was seriously ill, and not just in the mental sense.

            “But I’m also a prostitute, a _whore_ ,” Sayaka continued, drawing closer to Naraku.  “Men pay me to suck and jack them off.  If they pay enough, I let them fuck me, or my other women, which you fucking _killed_.  I don’t just do it for the money, which I need for my shrine, but because I _like it_.  Imagine if you had come to me and said something like: ‘Sayaka-sama, I’m dying.  Please purify me.  By the way, I have a really sexy, big-dicked servant that I could let you fuck.  He can make copies of himself and gangbang you and all your girls into next _week.’_ If you’d said _that,_ then I might have actually helped you out, _willingly_.”

            By Sayaka’s coarse, sexualized choice of language, Kagura wondered to herself: ‘ _This woman is a miko?_’  Sayaka stood directly before Naraku now.  She looked at the thick, black tendrils of demonic flesh suspending him from the ceiling and she reached out to close a hand around one, squeezing gently.  She held it as she might one of her male customer’s cocks, with care and relish, beginning to stroke the evil thing back and forth.  She recalled the sensation of Naraku using several like it to suspend her from the ceiling of her bath house in a web-like apparatus, teasing her mercilessly and bringing her to the peak of female arousal as he made ready to fill her with his cock.

            It didn’t take much imagination on Sayaka’s part for her to picture the tentacles alone doing the penetrating, a dozen or more of them becoming as one perfect, mouth/pussy/ass raping _machine_.  Naraku had used just _one_ on her mouth and it was bigger, harder, and ejaculated much more powerfully than any man she had ever serviced at her shrine.  Her pulse quickened at the thought: not that Byakuya was any slouch, Naraku’s tentacles could be a perfect, inexhaustible lover, as long, thick, and hard as she could stand and with the stamina to take her where she wanted to go, without fail. 

            “You stupid bastard,” Sayaka shook her head at Naraku, releasing his tentacle to gesture at it and the others like it.  “You could have even convinced me to give _these_ things a try.”

            “A wasted opportunity to please a woman… _consensually,_ ” Naraku mused almost wistfully.  “I’d apologize, if I felt any remorse at all.”He then concentrated his evil power and manipulated his heart within him, moving it to the oozing, undulating surface of his corrupted body, in the place where his chest should have been.

            _Bumb, bumb.  Bumb, bumb._ The sound of Naraku’s evil heartbeat began to resound within the den, filling Sayaka’s ears as well as Kagura’s and Byakuya’s, oppressing their very souls.  It was hard and rapid, and Kagura and Byakuya could feel their own hearts speeding up to match.  Their very life forces were bound to Naraku’s and it was _quivering_.  Reflexively, Kagura placed a hand over her heart as if to calm it while Byakuya lowered his head and grit his teeth, holding the den’s doorframe more tightly to keep himself upright. 

            Willingly, Sayaka began her life-saving work, giving it a venomous qualification: “I do this not for you, Naraku, but for Byakuya, Kagura, and the baby growing in my belly.”  Naraku’s heart glowed by the malevolent power of the Shikon no Tama, beating hypnotically and casting Sayaka’s face dramatically in rich, bloody magenta light.  The miko prostitute knelt before the oni lord on the narrow wooden path he made for her and cupped her hands toward one another, extending them forward to cover his heart and begin channeling her reiki into it.  Her body began to glow softly with soft blue light, that light beginning to flow visibly through her arms, into her hands, then into Naraku.

            Naraku hissed in relief as Sayaka’s reiki entered his body.  He soaked it up eagerly, feeling himself responding well to it.  He felt as if the pressure of her reiki was pushing his pain completely out of him.  He began to take control of the flow as he had done at her bath house and bravely, she chastised him for it.  “Not so _fast!”_ she warned.  “Don’t suck it out of me, let me feed it to you.  It’ll work better that way.”

            Remarkably, Naraku cooperated, returning control of the reiki transfer to Sayaka.  In return, she increased the flow to the fastest rate she could comfortably sustain.  Gradually, Naraku’s body began to change size and shape as the miko prostitute purged the corruption from it.  His grotesque exterior transmutated and his tissues reconfigured themselves at the cellular level, condensing from gelatinous demon flesh to ordinary bone and muscle.  He regained his tall, muscular humanoid form in a matter of seconds, entering it nude and on his knees upon the wooden path he made for Sayaka.

            Sayaka discontinued her reiki flow and slumped back away from Naraku weakly, collapsing onto the wooden path behind her.  She panted hard to catch her breath from the spiritual exertion and Byakuya rushed forward to kneel and take her into his arms, pulling her into his lap to prevent her from falling into the bottomless void to either side of her.  His body repaired, Naraku stood up and used his dark magic to summon his robes and armor about him.  He then mended the rest of the den’s flooring, sealing the sinkhole completely.  Finally, he materialized an appropriately evil-looking throne, one made of human bones, along the den’s back wall and sank back into it, sighing with relief.

            “Very good, Sayaka-sama,” Naraku praised mockingly, closing his red eyes in pleasure as he settled his forearms on his throne’s armrests.  “I feel much better, now.”

            With her back against Byakuya’s chest, Sayaka forced herself up into a sitting position, still weak from the reiki transfer.  She trembled in her wind demon lover’s arms, holding onto him tightly.  “I gave you less than before,” she said to Naraku, her heart racing and breath coming in shallow pants.  “It won’t last you long.  You’ll need more… _soon_.”

            “How very _right_ you are,” Naraku confirmed.  “Kagura, I now charge you with the first mission of your new life.”

            With the floor repaired, Kagura left her place near the den’s doorway and moved to stand next to Byakuya as he held Sayaka.  Naraku explained: “We are currently far out to sea, east of our homeland.  You and Byakuya will fly there and find Kikyo, then bring her to me here.”

            As a miko (and _not_ as a prostitute!), Kikyo’s name resounded in Sayaka’s mind.  In Christian analogy, Kikyo was basically her patron saint, the patron of all miko.  Sayaka wondered: ‘the’ Kikyo and ‘the’ Naraku under the same roof –she could only speculate as to the devastation that could result from two such powerful entities coming into close contact with each other.  She supposed it was a good thing that Naraku’s built his castle out to sea: on the water, there would be few bystanders.

            Kagura scoffed.  “Our homeland is a big place, in case you forgot,” she noted to Naraku with snark.  “How do we find her?  Start looking for her ‘soul collectors?’”

            Naraku smiled faintly.  “To locate Kikyo, you may use _this_ ,” he said.  Raising a hand from his throne’s armrest and turning it to face his palm upward, he summoned an object into it, a certain, finely-polished mirror framed in pure, floral-patterned silver.

            Kagura stilled, her ruby eyes widening, then narrowing in great suspicion as she studied the mirror.  “That’s _Kanna’s_ ,” she hushed, beginning to shake from the terrible realization pouring over her.  “Where is she?”

            Naraku said nothing, his smile becoming markedly more perverse.  Kagura looked down at Byakuya as he held Sayaka, grabbing one of his shoulders.  Breathing harder now, she asked: “Byakuya, where’s Kanna?”

            The mention of Kanna’s name summoned unpleasant memories into Byakuya’s mind.  He thought back to that terrible night years before, when Naraku expended Kanna in battle against InuYasha.  Back then, Kanna fought the hanyou warrior by proxy using her twenty-foot mirror golem, one equipped with a phantom copy of his own Tetsuseiga.  Her body and the golem’s were magically linked, so that every blow he or his friends landed on it affected her, as well.

            Byakuya distinctly remembered watching Kanna’s child-like body cracking and crumbling as if it was made out of glass, not flesh.  The process was technically bloodless, but uniquely horrifying all the same.  At last, when Kanna could fight no more, InuYasha spared her life, citing his fear of the nightmares that would ensue if he killed her.  Naraku had no such reservations and crushed the sapphire orb that served as her heart, turning her into a walking, talking suicide bomb with which to try and kill InuYasha and Kagome.

            Of course, InuYasha and Kagome survived, but besides the physical wounds, Kanna’s high-explosive fragmentation of a death left an indelible mark on the psyches of them, their friends, and Byakuya all at once.  Clearing his head of such ugly thoughts, the male wind demon jolted a bit as Kagura grabbed his shoulder.  He looked first at her hand, then up into her gorgeous red eyes.  His expression became laden with visible regret and he looked away, leading Kagura to remove her hand from him and glare pure death at Naraku.  “You _fuck_ ,” she spat.  “You piece of _shit._ You fucking _killed_ her!”

            Naraku studied Kagura’s enraged expression with sociopathic fascination.  “And?”

            Her glossy red lips curling into a terrible, yet beautiful sneer, Kagura stormed forward to try and tear Naraku’s throat out.  She did not run or leap at him, but _blundered_ forward with uncharacteristic clumsiness, nearly stumbling over the kneeling Byakuya out of sheer, inconsolable rage.  Raising a hand to strike, she came within just a few feet of him when he transformed the fingers of his free hand into five long, thin tendrils of prehensile demon flesh.  They shot out all at once and seized Kagura by her wrists, ankles, and neck, lifting her off her feet and holding her immobile.

            Holding Kanna’s mirror in one hand and Kagura’s entire body in the other, Naraku stood from his throne, bringing Kagura face to face with him.  “I’m afraid you only get _one_ try at me today, my dear,” he said to her, leading her to thrash in his tendrils’ hold, trying to break free.  Using a flesh tendril to give her neck a reminding squeeze, he added: “Think _carefully,_ Kagura.  I admit it – I killed Kanna.  But I also killed _you_ , yet here you are again.”

            Recognizing what Naraku was suggesting, Kagura forced herself to calm down, swallowing heavily and getting her breathing under control.  “Bring her back,” she demanded.  “God damn you, bring Kanna _back!_ ”

            Satisfied that Kagura would not attack him again, Naraku released the wind witch from his finger tentacles, dropping her carelessly to the wooden floor next to Byakuya and Sayaka.  “I will,” he agreed.  “In fact, I was considering it even before I revived _you_.  Byakuya was quite lonely, until he met Sayaka.  Besides, reviving Kanna will be enjoyable for me.  I’ve come to think of creating my incarnations as something of an art form.  When you return with Kikyo, Kanna will be here to greet you.”

            Then, Sayaka felt her stomach growl, a sound that did not go unnoticed by Naraku.  “My, you sound _hungry_ ,” he said to her.  “You must not have had anything to eat for several hours. Excluding _semen_ , that is.  You’ve been under such stress, lately.”

            Sayaka separated herself from Byakuya, sitting upright by her own strength.  She clasped a hand to her abdomen, contemplating the emptiness of her stomach.  Between two rounds of reiki transfer to Naraku and a round of hard, feverish sex with him and Byakuya, followed by another with Byakuya alone, her metabolism was completely out of whack, strained to the limit.  And she could only guess what the half-demon child growing inside her would do to her going forward.  “I could eat,” she admitted.

            “Good.  Byakuya, show Sayaka to the galley and feed her,” Naraku ordered, speaking of Sayaka as a house pet as he sat upon his throne again.  Using his telekinesis, he floated Kanna’s mirror over to Kagura, and the wind sorceress took it into her hands gingerly, knowing that it was not merely a _mirror,_ but a potential weapon of mass destruction.  “Kagura, you may join them, if you’re so inclined.  Once you are fed, go find Kikyo.”

            Sayaka was still weak from the reiki draining, so Byakuya and Kagura helped her to her feet, escorting her out of Naraku’s den.  Once they left, the den’s shoji door slid closed by Naraku’s telekinetic command, sealing the oni lord into the darkness of his own thoughts.

~~~~

 

**(Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – Through Ebony Archways)**

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oo50aDFNRg>

            After a few minutes of navigating the gloomy halls of Naraku’s castle, Byakuya, Sayaka, and Kagura reached the galley.  Back when the castle was inhabited by the retinue and servants of the human lord Kagewaki Hitomi, the galley was one of the places where the servants gathered for their meals.  However, of the nine incarnations Naraku had made during his sixty or so years of existence, only four were developed or civilized enough to take their food while sitting at a dinner table – Byakuya, Kagura, Kanna, and Hakudoshi.  The Infant was just that, and had to be fed as one, while the others, Goshinki, Kageromaru, Juromaru, and Musou, were bloodthirsty monsters that preferred their food still _living_.

            By the time Naraku created Byakuya, his list of living incarnations had been whittled down to just Kanna.  Even though Kanna wasn’t very talkative by nature, Byakuya still enjoyed eating with her whenever the opportunity arose.  After her death, he had to eat alone, feeling profoundly lonely in the grim emptiness of Naraku’s castle.  This led him to seek out Naraku’s enemies more and more often, happy for their brief company, even if they tried to kill him in the end.  In that respect, Sesshomaru was probably the worst out of all of them, talking the least and going for his sword the soonest.

            Therefore, Byakuya was thrilled to share the galley with another soul again, especially a pair of true beauties like Kagura and Sayaka.  The galley was dark upon their arrival, so Byakuya entered ahead of them and used a flash of youki from his fingers to light the lanterns that sat in the galley’s four corners.  The flickering orange light they gave off revealed a long, rectangular dining table that sat at the center of the galley’s wooden floor, rising to a height appropriate for around ten people to sit upon cushions around it.

            “Please, sit down,” Byakuya said to Kagura and Sayaka, gesturing to the table.  “I’ll start getting things ready.”

            Kagura and Sayaka sat at the table, watching as Byakuya went to work.  The galley was divided into two halves, one in which food was prepared and one in which food was consumed, the half with the dining table.  In accordance with Japanese architecture of the time, the kitchen half of the galley was recessed about six inches lower than the dining half, its center marked by a stone-lined fire pit and an iron cooking pot mounted over it by an iron frame. 

            Byakuya moved to a wooden chest along one of the kitchen’s shoji walls and opened it.  The chest was made watertight with meticulously-cleaned animal intestine and filled with ice.  Atop the ice lay several large fish, an assortment of salmon, tuna, and bass.  Where Naraku’s dark power heated the water of the castle’s various baths, it could also cool water to well beyond the point of freezing.  Byakuya personally sourced the water for the ice and the fish from the surrounding ocean.  He collected and transported the saltwater in buckets or leather pouches for freezing or purification into freshwater.  To gather the fish, he skimmed the surface of the sea near the castle in one of his origami cranes, dragging a fishnet behind it to use his crane as an airborne fishing trawler.

            Selecting three fish from the ice chest at random, Byakuya turned and held them up by their tails for Kagura and Sayaka to see.  “I hope you like fish!” he said to them with a cheerful smile, knocking the chest closed with a foot.

            “ _Duh._ I’m from a _fishing_ village,” Sayaka said.  “I _live_ on fish.”

            Byakuya’s pleasant expression sobered at Sayaka’s mention of her village.  As he moved to the kitchen’s fire pit and ignited it with his youki, then skewered the fish he had selected over the rising flames, he told the miko prostitute the terrible truth.  “About your village,” he began, summoning the courage to finish his sentence.  “Naraku destroyed it.”

            “I know.  I sensed it,” Sayaka replied, to Byakuya’s surprise.  She tapped one of her temples for him to see.  “Miko powers, you know?”

            “Right,” Byakuya replied.  “I’m sorry.”

            “What’s _wrong_ with Naraku?” Kagura asked to Sayaka and Byakuya at once.  “I mean, _other_ than the usual shit.”

            “The Shikon jewel is what’s wrong,” Byakuya said, turning the three fish upon their skewers to cook them evenly.  “It’s killing him.  You saw what he looked like, just now.  It’s caused his body to start disintegrating and a miko’s reiki reverses the process, though only temporarily.  To stay alive, he’s been looking for powerful miko to take it from.  Sayaka, here, is the latest and soon, he’ll have Kikyo.”

            Ignoring the implications Naraku’s illness held for her own mortality, Kagura looked to Sayaka, looking her right in her lovely golden eyes.  “Sayaka-san, you have my most profound apologies that you got dragged into all this.”

            Sayaka smiled at Kagura with great appreciation.  “Thank you,” she said.  Studying Kagura, then Byakuya with some fascination, she asked: “The two of you seem pretty agreeable, for a couple of youkai.  What are you doing working for a _dickhead_ like Naraku?”

            Kagura laughed bitterly.  “ _Work?_   ‘Work’ implies payment.  Naraku doesn’t pay us, except maybe with continued life in exchange for following his orders.”

            Byakuya left the three fish to cook for a moment as he reached for a large ceramic vase sitting on a nearby wooden countertop and uncorked it.  It contained purified water and he poured it into the iron pot beneath the fish.  “He also didn’t _hire_ us, or even just capture and enslave us,” he said as he worked, adding onto Kagura’s statement.  “He _made_ us.  He engineered our bodies, imbued them with spirit, and gave birth to us in a chamber beneath the castle.  We are his _incarnations_ , detachments of his body and projections of his mind.”

            “So _that’s_ what you meant,” Sayaka realized, thinking back to her earlier conversation with Byakuya in the castle’s bath and evaluating it in light of Naraku’s recent boast of his ‘art.’  “When you said you are ‘effectively’ Naraku’s son.”

            “Yes,” Byakuya confirmed.  As the water he poured into his cooking pot began to boil, he moved to a wicker basket next to the ice chest.  It contained several pounds of dry, clean rice, which he transferred to the cooking pot by a large wooden bowl.  “Kagura and I are his children, his twins, and his _shades_ all at once.  As his ‘twins,’ we seemed to have come out significantly less psychotic, but in any event, our lives are bound to his.”

            “I guess I have another reason to help Naraku stay alive, then,” Sayaka said to Byakuya and Kagura at once.  “If I keep Naraku alive, I keep _you_ alive, too.”

            “ _There_ ’s that miko compassion,” Kagura said with a wry smile.  “I didn’t know what to think about you, at first, with the way you talk.  You say you’re a _prostitute,_ too?”

            “Uh…” Sayaka faltered, suddenly embarrassed about discussing with Kagura the lewd things she did for money, embarrassed in a way she had not been with Naraku.  “ _Part time_ , yes.  But not anymore.  My girls are dead, killed by Naraku, and if he’s destroyed my village, then most of my usual clients are probably dead, too.”

            Kagura’s ruby eyes narrowed and she inhaled deeply through her nose, detecting a particularly unsettling scent woven into Sayaka’s clean, natural feminine one.  She smelled _semen_ , both Byakuya’s, as she expected given her pregnancy by him, and _Naraku’s_.  “I smell Naraku on you,” the wind witch said the miko prostitute.  “Did he do what I _think_ he did?”

            Sayaka nodded, leading Kagura to add: “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he did the same thing to me…and _Byakuya_ , too.”

            As he used a sharp knife to slice up a few turnips and cucumbers he’d drawn from a second ice chest next to the one that held the fish, Byakuya looked over to Sayaka, seeing utter sympathy in her eyes, then looked back down to his vegetables.  Sayaka couldn’t help but smile at him, looking between him and Kagura.  “And so marks the first convening of the Anally and/or Vaginally Raped by Naraku Club,” she remarked.

            With the fish cooked thoroughly, the rice made soft and fluffy through boiling, and the turnips and cucumbers sliced up into three even servings, Byakuya transferred all the food he had prepared to three rectangular wooden plates and placed them neatly upon the dining table.  He set one in front of Kagura, one in front of Sayaka, and one in a place directly across from the two women, where he would sit.  For drink, he poured water from the water vase into three wooden cups, setting one next to each plate.  Finally, he provided soy sauce in a short ceramic bottle and wooden _hashi_ as eating utensils.  Politely, Kagura and Sayaka waited to begin eating until Byakuya sat down with them.

            Sayaka raised her cup of water as if to propose a toast.  “To Naraku,” she said, to Kagura and Byakuya’s intrigue.  “May he choke on many dicks.”

            “I’ll drink to _that_ ,” Kagura replied, tapping her cup to Sayaka’s and sipping from it as she began to eat.  Sayaka and Byakuya followed, dining with her in comfortable silence.

~~~~~

 

            After eating and cleaning up, Byakuya, Kagura, and Sayaka left the galley, moving toward the castle’s front entrance.  The time had come for Byakuya and Kagura to leave for their mission to find and capture Kikyo.  Sayaka followed them not to join them in their mission, as Naraku would not permit her to leave the castle, but simply to remain in their company for as long as possible.

            Sayaka became fearful at the thought of being left alone in the castle.  As she followed Naraku’s wind demon incarnations through the castle’s halls, they passed more than a few of the castle’s shambling skeleton servants, their once fine silken robes rotting right off their bones.  Naraku was obviously controlling them, directing a few of them to turn their bare skulls and ‘look’ at Sayaka with empty eye sockets, then give a threatening chatter with bare, gumless teeth.

            Just as Kagura and Byakuya reached the castle’s entrance, Sayaka reached out to grab Byakuya by a sleeve.  “ _Wait_ ,” she protested to him and Kagura at once.  “Do both of you have to go?  I…I don’t want to be here alone.”

            Kagura looked at Byakuya, then at Sayaka.  “Naraku ordered both me and Byakuya to capture Kikyo.  Knowing him, that’s probably not negotiable.”

            “But I can be in two places at once,” Byakuya noted, to Kagura’s great interest.  Stepping back away from Kagura and Sayaka, he focused his demonic magic and turned perpendicular to the two women, then walked forward slowly, his body separating into two identical halves: the original, and a _copy_.

            Byakuya’s copy moved to stand at Sayaka’s side, her protector.  She reached out and touched one of his arms, reassured to find that he was indeed made of solid matter.  She knew Byakuya was capable of duplicating himself, having witnessed that power in ‘action’ at her bath house, but she wanted to make sure his copy was real.

            “Byakuya, stay with Sayaka and don’t let any of the skeletons touch her,” Byakuya ordered to his copy, effectively talking to himself.  “Don’t leave her side for any reason.”

            Byakuya’s copy nodded.  “Yes, Byakuya,” he replied, smiling from the strange feeling of addressing himself in the third-person.

            With Sayaka’s concerns addressed as well as possible, Kagura and the original Byakuya exited the castle, stepping out into the brisk, salty seaside air.  There, they were met by a single skeleton servant, once a human woman, judging by the cut of its kimono.  The undead servant bowed and extended its bony hands toward Kagura, holding some very special objects out to her: a number of pure white bird feathers, and her enchanted paper fan.

            “ _Heh_ ,” Kagura snorted.  “Looks like Naraku’s smart enough not to give me any weapons while he and I are in the same room.”  She took the fan and the feathers from the skeleton and it turned to shuffle back into the castle.  Byakuya looked on as she carefully inserted the feathers into her glossy black hair for easy access, then snapped her fan open to inspect it.  She gave it an experimental fling to her front, producing a gust of wind that kicked up large amounts of dirt and pebbles from the rocky ground.

            Byakuya drew one of his origami cranes from inside his haori and transformed it into its giant ‘flight’ form.  Kagura did the same with one of her feathers and the two wind demons mounted their unusual aircraft, lifting off from Naraku’s castle island and turning to head due west, toward Honshu.

            They had a miko to capture!

 

**-To be continued-**


	19. Of a Miko and a Taijiya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kikyo and Kohaku travel the Japanese countryside together on a sort of ‘pilgrimage,’ visiting Shinto shrines and clearing villages of demon infestations as they search for leads to Naraku’s whereabouts.  Such a lead comes to them at very high speed when Naraku attacks Sayaka’s shrine and village.  They travel there as quickly as they can and find revolting photographic evidence of Naraku’s crimes via Kikyo’s ability to commune with the souls of the dead.

**(Soundtrack: Opeth – Eternal Rains Will Come)**

**<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUk4l_VMskg>  **

During the twilight darkness of early morning, in a small rice farming village a few dozen miles inland from Honshu’s western coast, a middle-aged man led his bag-saddled mare to the barn that stood near his house.  The bags contained rice he had just harvested from his nearby paddies, so he stopped his mare in front of his house to offload them for storage, then continued on.  Several yards before reaching the barn, the mare abruptly snorted, neighed, then reared back in fright, seemingly repelled by the presence of someone or some _thing_ inside the barn.

            Keeping tight hold on the horse’s reins, the farmer tried to calm it.  “Whoa, girl!  What’s wrong?  Do you smell something?”

            Inside the farmer’s barn, something _skittered_ across wood, something with _claws_.  Bravely, but perhaps somewhat foolishly, the farmer secured his mare to a wooden column supporting his house’s front porch, then marched to his barn and threw its sliding front doors wide open. Grabbing a pitchfork that leaned up against the inside of one of the doors, the farmer shouted out.  “Whoever’s in here, come out now!  _Show yourself!”_

            Peering back at the farmer from the darkness was first one pair of glowing red eyes, then _ten_.  They farmer gripped his pitchfork with both hands, as if making ready to fight, and one creature the glowing eyes belonged to leapt out into the growing light.  It was a snowy white fox demon, a _kitsune_ not unlike Shippo.  Presumably the leader of its pack by its alpha nature, it puffed itself up impressively and snarled out at the farmer, challenging him to attack.  The farmer wavered in place, and when the fox demon made a forward feint, he dropped his pitchfork and ran.

            “Youkai!  _Youkai!_ ” the farmer cried out as he ran to his neighbors, seeking strength in their numbers.

            A terrible racket ensued in the village as one household after another roused to the farmer’s voice.  The village guard, a modest contingent of a dozen or so disciplined, diligent men, sounded their alarm bells, alerting anyone not within earshot of the farmer to the danger that had arisen.  The guards converged on the farmer’s demon-occupied barn, armed with swords and polearms where the farmer had only been armed with his pitchfork.

            Outside the village, along the well-worn dirt path connecting it to its distant neighbors, the sound of the village’s alarm bells reached the ears of a certain miko, one _other_ than Kagome and Sayaka.  Walking in wooden sandals, she wore a miko’s customary red hakama and white haori, a wooden longbow and arrow quiver slung over her back.  Blessed with classic Japanese female beauty, she wore her long, glossy black hair bound behind her back in a low, elegant tail, her forelocks flowing down her chest to curve back upward over her shoulders and integrate with her tail.  Her alabaster skin glowed softly in the dim moonlight, her smoky grey eyes shimmering with both great intelligence and a miko’s spiritual power.

            Given the general darkness, one could overlook the extra pale complexion of the miko’s skin, for no blood moved within her.  She did not truly live.  Her body was a humanoid construct of bones, clay, and grave soil, animated by the dark magic of the ogre-witch Urasue.  Her name: _Kikyo_ – InuYasha’s one-time lover, the woman from which Kagome was reincarnated, and once again, the target of Naraku’s vile machinations.

            At Kikyo’s side walked her ‘protector,’ none other than Sango’s brother, Kohaku.  At this point, Naraku had not yet attacked Sayaka’s village or resurrected Kagura.  As Naraku would taunt to Kagura in the coming hours, Kohaku had matured from an adolescent to a full adult in the seven or so years the wind witch had been absent.  He was no longer the lanky teen that Kagura knew him as, but a young, yet fully grown man of about Miroku’s stature.  He stood eye-to-eye with Kikyo now, and his increased height, combined with his increased muscle mass built from years of running around Japan on foot, fighting demons and pursuing his taijiya training, had necessitated significant modifications to the fit of his black/green taijiya bodysuit.

            Kohaku took to travelling with Kikyo soon after Naraku killed Kagura.  Up until shortly before then, Naraku had been controlling his mind to employ him in his various schemes.  That control began when the oni lord lured him, Sango, the taijiyas’ father, and the best of the other taijiya from their village to the castle of Kagewaki Hitomi, posing as Kagewaki himself.  Via demonic possession, Naraku surreptitiously used Kohaku to kill his own father, kill his fellow demon slayers, and seriously injure Sango before allowing him to be shot to death by Kagewaki’s archers.

            Maintaining the guise of Kagewaki, Naraku ordered the bodies of the taijiya, Sango and Kohaku included, to be buried in Kagewaki’s castle garden.  Simultaneously, he passed word to the taijiyas’ various demonic enemies that the taijiya home village was undefended, and a slaughter on the order of his attack on Sayaka’s village ensued.  Despite being buried alive, Sango clawed her way out of her shallow grave and Naraku took advantage of her disorientation to nurse her back to stable health, thereby ingratiating himself to her.  He used that ingratiation and trust to set her against InuYasha, but that plot of his ultimately failed, resulting in Sango joining the hanyou warrior’s pack on a permanent basis, eventually becoming one of his lovers.

            While Sango survived the blade of Kohaku’s kusarigama, his chain scythe, Kohaku himself did not survive Kagewaki’s arrows, and Naraku resurrected him into a depraved state of living death using a shard of the Shikon jewel.  Buried into the base of Kohaku’s neck, the shard sustained his body’s biological and neurological processes as normal, with the added effect of making him vulnerable to suggestion in the form of Naraku’s orders.  Naraku took full advantage, suppressing Kohaku’s memory and using him as his soldier and spy, using him as just another of his incarnations.

            Eventually, Naraku partnered Kohaku with Kagura to carry out his insidious plans, and it was the wind witch’s sultry, backhanded, yet fundamentally benevolent temperament toward him that began to eat away at the oni lord’s control over his mind.  One especially depraved order from Naraku, the order to kill all the inhabitants of a castle at which Kohaku and Kagura had been safeguarding the Infant, strained Kohaku’s latent conscience such that it broke Naraku’s control completely.  Having regained his memories and overcome Naraku’s control without his knowledge, Kohaku played along with the evil hanyou’s schemes to try and sabotage them from the inside.

            This period of Kohaku’s life came to an end with Kagura’s death at Naraku’s hands.  Naraku discovered his ruse of feigning amnesia, knowledge that Byakuya, his apparently loyal replacement for Kagura, had inherited from him, so Kohaku could no longer exploit it.  With the return of his memory also came terrible guilt for what he perceived as his crimes while under Naraku’s spell.  He knew that it was his blade that had killed his father and friends, as well as leaving a permanent, disfiguring scar in Sango’s back.  For this reason, he could not bear to be near Sango until he had achieved retribution against Naraku, so he began to travel with Kikyo, finding some measure of peace at her side and finding purpose in serving as her protector.  Kohaku embraced this peace and purpose knowing full well that one day, Kikyo might have to remove the jewel shard that sustained his life.

            Back in the present, Kohaku heard the village alarm bells as Kikyo did.  “Trouble ahead,” he said to her.  “Shall we check it out?”

            “Let’s,” Kikyo agreed.

            By the time Kikyo and Kohaku reached the farming village, the village guards had surrounded the demon-infested barn, a crowd of villagers having built up behind them to watch.  Kikyo’s miko outfit attracted attention right away and the villagers beseeched her to purge the demons for them.  The crowd parted for her and Kohaku and the two of them approached what looked like the guard in charge of the cordon around the barn.

            The guard turned to see Kikyo and Kohaku approaching.  His eyes widened at the sight of Kikyo’s red-and-white miko garb as well as Kohaku’s glossy black taijiya bodysuit, and a relieved smile crossed his face.  “A _miko!_ And a _taijiya?_   Thank _God._ You’re just in time,” he said.

“My name is Kikyo,” Kikyo introduced herself, then gestured to Kohaku beside her.  “And this is Kohaku, my bodyguard.  We heard the alarm bells.  What’s going on, here?”

            “We have some youkai holed up in this barn,” the guard explained.  “The owner of this barn says they’re kitsune, ten or more of them.  We’re…not quite sure how to fight kitsune in close combat, so we were about to burn the barn down.”

“You mustn’t do that,” Kohaku warned sternly.  “Fire is a kitsune’s natural element.  The most you’ll do is provoke them to attack and make them stronger in the process.”

            Kikyo nodded at Kohaku.  “Kohaku and I can remove the demons without burning anything,” she said to the guard.  “Does the barn have a back door?”

            “Yes, it does, on the side opposite us,” the guard answered.

            “Kohaku, go to the back door.  Cover it and be ready to open it on my signal,” Kikyo instructed.

            Immediately, Kohaku was off, dashing around to the rear of the barn.  The Shikon jewel in him and the natural power of his body made his movements quick and graceful; he moved like youkai now, the very creatures he had been trained to fight.  Arriving at the back end of the barn, the taijiya found that the back doors were the same as the front, two sliding doors that met in the middle.  He readied his kusarigama, its sickle blade in one hand and its weighted chain in the other, and waited for Kikyo’s word.

            With Kohaku in position, Kikyo advanced, stepping past the guards circling the barn.  She reached into her white haori and retrieved a pair of enchanted seals, casting them at the barn as rectangular paper darts.  Guided by her reiki, the seals flew edge-first, then in the last few inches of their flight, they changed orientation to apply their backs to the barn’s outer wall on opposite sides of its front doors.  The seals detected the presence of youki inside the barn and their Japanese ideograms, handwritten by Kikyo in black ink, began to glow a bright, purifying blue.

            The seals’ glow enveloped the entire barn, turning it into a spiritual ‘oven’ that the kitsune would not be able to stand for long.  Kikyo raised her voice so that Kohaku would be able to hear her on the other side of the barn.  “Kohaku, open the back doors!”

            Kohaku transferred the weighted chain of his kusarigama from his left hand to his right, holding both the sickle and chain in his right hand to briefly free up his left.  He rushed forward and grabbed onto the handle of the right hand door.  His Shikon-enhanced strength enabled him to throw the door clean open in one thrust of his hand and he leapt back away from it, preparing himself to engage whatever came rushing out of the darkness inside.

            The Shikon jewel shard augmented most aspects of Kohaku’s physiology, including his eyesight, so even in the darkness, he could see the outlines of the kitsune within.  They appeared to be of assorted ages, ranging from full adults to young kits, each of them covered in rather beautiful, snowy white fur.  They growled out their rising discomfort as Kikyo’s purifying seals worked their effect, and the ‘alpha’ of the pack launched himself at Kohaku first, going for the taijiya’s throat.

            Kohaku proved too fast and too skilled, even for the alpha.  He dodged the kitsune’s lunge and used the weighted end of his kusarigama’s chain as a projectile weapon, casting it at the kitsune’s neck with great accuracy and carefully measured force.  The steel weight found its mark with a dull, bloodless thud and the kitsune gave a pitiful _yelp_ as all strength seemed to flow out of it at once.  Unconscious but still living, the alpha kitsune augured into the grassy ground outside the barn and Kohaku bound its slender legs with his kusarigama’s chain, lifting it up and taking it under an arm.

            “I’ve got your leader,” Kohaku spoke out to the alpha’s pack as they cowered inside the barn.  He spoke with the knowledge that they could understand him; the kitsune were not mere animals, something that his father had made sure to teach to him and Sango.  “I won’t hurt him or any of you.  Now come on, follow me.”

            Hesitantly, the next largest, strongest kitsune crept out of the barn, followed by the rest of the pack, one by one.  Keeping his ears open for any sign of attack, Kohaku turned and bounded out of the village with the alpha in his arms, making for the forest that stood nearby.  The pack followed him, and once a safe distance inside the forest, he lay the alpha on the mossy forest floor.  He unbound its legs and leapt up into a nearby tree, watching it from a position of safety and waiting for it to come back to consciousness.

            The rest of the pack arrived shortly after, surrounding their unconscious leader.  Soon, the alpha stirred and shook its vulpine head to clear its senses, returning to its pawed feet.  Cocking its ears, it looked up to see Kohaku in the tree above, regarding him with uncertainty.  Addressing that uncertainty, Kohaku spoke: “I’m a demon slayer, but I only kill when it’s necessary.  Today, killing you _wasn’t_.”

            The alpha blinked in comprehension, though unable to render an intelligible reply.  Smiling pleasantly, Kohaku pointed over a shoulder, in the general direction of the village he’d removed the alpha from.  “From now on, you and your pack should probably stay away from human villages.  Now go, and be safe.”

            With a respectful dip of its head, the alpha turned and ran, deeper into the forest, followed closely by its pack.  The foxes disappeared into the wooded darkness and Kohaku hopped down from his perch, leaving the forest and moving rapidly to return to Kikyo.  He found her waiting at the village’s outskirts, along a road that led out of the village in the direction they had been travelling before they’d heard the alarm bells.  She held a small canvas pouch in a hand and as he reached her, she tossed it to him.

            “I’ve negotiated our pay,” Kikyo said as Kohaku caught the pouch.  The taijiya opened it and poured its contents into a hand, finding a shiny pile of assorted gold coins.

            Kohaku’s chocolate brown eyes widened at the amount he counted in his palm.  “This is very generous!” he exclaimed to Kikyo.

            “The villagers were very grateful,” Kikyo said.  “The kitsune caused no injuries, and the village guard didn’t have to burn down the barn the kitsune had occupied.”  Noting the complete absence of blood on Kohaku’s bodysuit, either human or demon blood, she added with a knowing smile: “You let the kitsune live.”

            “Yes,” Kohaku admitted.  Privately, he was relieved that his and Kikyo’s act of helping out the villagers did not end with overt violence.  “They weren’t evil or anything.  There was no need to kill them.”

            “You have a good heart, Kohaku,” Kikyo complimented.  “You’ve done well to keep it, after all the things you’ve seen.”

            “And _done_ ,” Kohaku punctuated Kikyo’s compliment grimly.  “I guess…I guess I’d like to avoid adding to that list whenever I can.”

            Right at that moment, Naraku began his attack on Sayaka’s shrine and village.  The flux in his demonic aura traveled at the speed of light, originating along Honshu’s northeast coast and travelling hundreds of miles to reach Kikyo and Kohaku’s position near Honshu’s _western_ coast in a fraction of a second.  Kikyo bristled as the echo of Naraku’s youki rippled over her and she looked away from Kohaku to face the direction the echo had come, facing due east.  In reality, she directed her eyes to a forested horizon, but she focuses her miko senses to ‘see’ much further, visualizing Naraku’s aura as a mass of inky blackness upon a greyed-out, neutral plain.  A mass of light, the aura of a miko other than herself, collided with Naraku’s as if in combat.

            “Kikyo-sama?” Kohaku asked, concerned by the stern expression on Kikyo’s face.  Briefly, he looked in the direction she did, seeing nothing but trees but knowing the miko saw more by her Shinto training.

            “It’s Naraku,” Kikyo revealed, much to Kohaku’s alarm.  “He does battle with a miko somewhere to our east.  The distance between us and them is great.”

            “Is it Kagome-sama that Naraku’s fighting with?” Kohaku asked further. If it _was_ Kagome, then Sango probably wasn’t far removed from the scene.  His shame caused him to eschew Sango’s social company, but he still felt compelled to intervene, protect her from danger, especially when Naraku was involved.

            Kikyo looked away from Naraku’s aura and that of the unidentified miko, turning her head to her right to face further southward.  There, she saw Kagome’s aura shining as an unmistakable beacon of purity in the hundred-mile-plus distance.  “No, this is someone else,” she said to Kohaku, to the taijiya’s partial relief.  “But if I can feel Naraku’s aura at this distance, then Kagome can, as well.  She, InuYasha, and all of their friends will undoubtedly move to pursue him, including your sister.”  Kikyo paused briefly to study the conflict on Kohaku’s face.  “I understand your reluctance to see her.  Therefore, I leave the decision to investigate to _you_.”

            Kohaku shook his head.  “I won’t be a coward,” he said.  “Let’s go!”

**(Soundtrack: Cauldron – The Leaven/Fermenting Enchantress)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6v_eXpb2iQ** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6v_eXpb2iQ)

            Kikyo nodded and invited Kohaku to follow her down the road they stood in, further away from the nearby farming village.  Once she was certain that no one could observe her or her taijiya bodyguard together, she flexed her reiki and summoned her _Shinidamachu,_ her insectoid, serpentine ‘soul collectors’ to her side.  Youkai by nature, they had been following her and Kohaku all along, trailing them from above and made invisible by simple, light refracting energy barriers powered by their youki.  Now, the soul collectors dispensed with their invisibility and descended.

            Hovering close to the dirt road, five soul collectors sidled up to each other and interlinked their short, reptilian arms to lock themselves together, creating a pallet-like surface on which Kikyo and Kohaku could ride.  The miko and taijiya stepped aboard, then knelt atop the ad-hoc aircraft the soul collectors created and they lifted off, climbing above the height of the nearby forests and turning east.  Using their youki for thrust, the Shinidamachu accelerated slowly so as not to throw their passengers off.

In the air, loaded with about 200-250 pounds between Kikyo and Kohaku, Kikyo’s soul collectors had a limited top speed, perhaps fifty miles per hour.  This was fast compared to the general state of human transportation of the era, but it was only half the top speed of InuYasha and Sesshomaru’s combined pack.  With their greater speed in the air, achieved through Sesshomaru’s and Ah-Un’s natural ability to fly combined with Shippo’s and Kirara’s ability to transform into airborne forms, the two dog demons and their friends reached Sayaka’s village two hours ahead of Kikyo and Kohaku.

            Separated by hundreds of miles, Kagome and Kikyo each used their miko senses to observe Naraku’s behavior at Sayaka’s village as they approached.  Kikyo could _feel_ Naraku’s aura absorbing Sayaka’s to some extent, and then she could feel the oni lord’s demented orgy between himself, Sayaka, Byakuya, and Sayaka’s nine junior priestesses begin in earnest.  Right then, Kikyo felt grateful that her imitation body didn’t have a stomach to purge.  Even the emotional impact of such depravity committed against a fellow miko was blunted; after all, her body was running on only part of a soul, the balance made up by the spirits of the dead that her Shinidamachu brought to her.

            Kikyo and Kohaku arrived over Sayaka’s seaside village by mid-morning, well after InuYasha, Sesshomaru, and their respective packs had departed to return to Edo.  No actual village remained there for the miko and taijiya to find; InuYasha had flung all of it into a Meido created by his Tetsuseiga’s Zangetsuha technique to prevent the villagers, turned into undead monsters by Naraku’s demonic parasites, from escaping into the countryside and causing further havoc.  In the village’s place lay a vast, crescent-shaped crater, now filled with seawater that glimmered in the rising sunlight.

            The only human structures left in the area were those of Sayaka’s shrine, positioned up a forested hill outside the reach of InuYasha’s Meido.  Kikyo guided her soul collectors to fly herself and Kohaku to it, descending to land near the shrine’s red torii gate.  “Naraku isn’t here,” Kikyo said to Kohaku as she stepped down onto solid ground, looking around her and searching for any trace of the oni lord’s aura.  She found none.  “We should see if there’s anyone inside the shrine.”

            Kikyo’s soul collectors, having joined to form a flying pallet, separated into individuals and loitered in the air above the shrine, while Kikyo herself and Kohaku walked briskly along the path connecting the torii with the shrine’s worship hall.  Using one hand to keep the scabbard of his katana steady for a quick draw, Kohaku approached the hall’s front doors before Kikyo, throwing them open and stepping through them to confront whatever danger lay inside.

            The worship hall was dark and empty, but a certain smell hung in the air.  Kohaku sniffed experimentally and wrinkled his nose.  “It smells… _odd_ in here.  Is that… _semen?_ ” he asked, taken aback by the implications of smelling such a thing inside what was nominally a place of worship.

            Kikyo could not immediately confirm or deny what Kohaku smelled.  Excluding her hearing and her eyesight, her own physical senses were limited by the artificial nature of her body; she could not taste, smell, or feel as a normal woman could.  Stepping inside the worship hall behind Kohaku, she looked to one corner of the hall to see an assortment of very large, concave brass pans piled up on top of each other.  Inspecting them more closely, she saw traces of viscous white fluid clinging to their edges and insides.  Now able to answer Kohaku definitively, she said: “Yes, it _is_.”

            Kohaku followed Kikyo over to the pans, seeing the remains of Sayaka’s customers’ ‘offering’ for himself.  “God.  Is this _Naraku’s?_ ”

            “No, this semen contains only human energy.”

            “Whether it’s human or demon in origin, why would there be _semen_ in a worship hall, of all places?” Kohaku wondered.

            “Sometimes, when donations run low, a priestess may resort to _unconventional_ methods to fill her coffers,” Kikyo replied furtively.

            “Have you…have you ever…well, _you know_ …?” Kohaku asked in embarrassment.

            “Have I ever engaged in sexual activity, or have I ever supported my shrine by selling my body, you mean?” Kikyo countered with a rare twinkle in her smoky grey eyes.

            “Uh…” Kohaku faltered.

            Kikyo smiled, then turned her attention to the worship hall’s back door.  “There’s nothing here.  Let’s check out back.”

            In the small courtyard that lay between the worship hall and the bath house, Kikyo and Kohaku recoiled at what they found: faintly smoldering piles of human remains, the bones of the village guards that investigated Naraku’s demonic presence at the shrine, and those of Sayaka’s junior priestesses.  Naraku had implanted all of them with his demonic parasites and set them upon InuYasha and his friends, leaving them no choice but to defend themselves with deadly force.  Once they were cut down, InuYasha directed Shippo to immolate their bodies, fearing they could somehow rise again and attack someone else.

            Kohaku spotted the charred form of one of Naraku’s parasites in one of the piles and approached it cautiously.  He unsheathed his katana and skewered the dead monster, dislodging it from the surrounding detritus and lifting it up to get a better look at it.  It was as some kind of mutated spider.  “Look at _this_ ,” he said to Kikyo.  “What is this thing?”

            Kikyo moved to Kohaku’s side, channeling her reiki into a hand and reaching out to the parasite suspended by Kohaku’s sword.  The parasite evaporated into glowing ash as the reiki purified it.  “It is demonic in nature,” Kikyo said.  “One of Naraku’s creations, undoubtedly.”

            At her command, Kikyo’s Shinidamachu flew overhead and descended to the smoking piles, extracting the spirits of the dead as spheres of glowing blue light and bringing them back to their mistress.  Kikyo took one and used her reiki to manipulate it between her hands, closing her eyes and concentrating her mind to commune with it.  The spirit was that of one of the guards; in her mind’s eye, Kikyo could see and even hear the guard’s last moments, as he made a brief, futile strike at Naraku that ended only in his own bloody death.

            Kohaku looked on, mildly disturbed as Kikyo pulled the spirit to her chest, absorbing it into her body.  She breathed a sigh of relief as the spirit’s energy merged with her internal reserves, giving her a much-needed boost of raw life force.  The next spirit she drew to her was that of one of Sayaka’s junior priestesses.  Before absorbing it, she communed with it as she had the guard’s, and for better or worse, it contained decidedly more information.

            From the much younger miko’s perspective, Kikyo watched a nude Naraku forcibly drain an equally nude woman – another miko – of what appeared to be her reiki.  Visibly older than her junior priestesses, the woman had quite the voluptuous body, her hair cropped very close to her head.  Kikyo heard Naraku speak the woman’s name – _Sayaka_.  Then, the oni lord’s body was as a withered husk, and the influx of Sayaka’s purifying light appeared to _reverse_ the withering, returning him to his full evil, muscular, well-endowed glory.  Shortly after, Naraku achieved a powerful erection and initiated his tentacle-coiled, semen-drenched bath house orgy with Sayaka and the other mikos, with the view of the one whose eyes Kikyo co-opted soon filled by a nude, highly-aroused Byakuya.

            To her horror, Kikyo found that the young woman suffered _two_ deaths.  The first came when Naraku used one of his transparent tentacle cocks to pump thick, white demon seed into her lungs.  Her vision darkened to pure black as she drowned, then abruptly returned as Sesshomaru used his Tenseiga to revive her and the eight other women.  Next, Kikyo could see InuYasha, Sesshomaru, and all the other members of their packs gathered around.  Kagome comforted each, speaking to them and asking what Naraku had been after.

            Before any could answer, Kikyo watched the junior priestess to whom Kagome spoke suddenly double over, clutching her sides in pain.  Naraku’s parasite erupted from her chest in a bloody deluge, driving Kagome and the others backward.  The woman through which Kikyo spectated collapsed as well, blood spattering the floorboards beneath her as her own parasite ‘hatched.’  Screams and shouts ensued as more arachnoid parasites clawed their way out of the other women and even the guards outside the bath house, their ruined bodies animated beyond death by Naraku’s magic.  To Kikyo’s relief, the terrible scene ended when InuYasha, back-to-back and shoulder-to-shoulder with his other friends as they defended themselves, used Tetsuseiga to cleave her avatar’s head from her neck.

            Distantly, Kikyo heard Kohaku calling her name as she came out of her telepathic reverie.  The taijiya grabbed her arm to shake her and she came back to herself with a visible jolt, stepping back away from the spirit her soul collector held.  “ _Kikyo!_ ” Kohaku shouted with concern.

            Blinking a few times and shaking her head, Kikyo gave Kohaku a bewildered look as she regained her senses.  “I’m okay,” she assured, grasping Kohaku’s outstretched arm with both hands to steady herself.

            “The spirit showed you something,” Kohaku stated, relaxing a bit.  “What did you see?”

            Carefully, Kikyo processed what she saw in the junior miko’s soul.  Beyond the dark pleasure Naraku took in violating Sayaka and her girls, Kikyo perceived the real reason for his appearance; he was ill in some way, and a miko’s reiki was the medicine for that illness.  The oni lord’s murder of the younger women was sadistic, yet practical; they were witnesses to his reiki intake and killing them would provoke Sesshomaru to use Tenseiga.  Implanting his parasites in them ensured that in the event the daiyoukai _did_ use the healing sword, they wouldn’t live long enough to tell what they had seen, and then be totally beyond saving.

            Kikyo looked into Kohaku’s rich brown eyes.  If she told him what she had learned, she would be putting him in further danger; Naraku had enough reasons to kill him, already.  “You don’t want to know,” she said.  “All you need to know is that Naraku is responsible.”

            Recognizing the steely intensity in Kikyo’s gaze, Kohaku relented immediately.  “Okay.”

            Kikyo stepped back up to the spirit of the young priestess that her soul collector held, then brought it to her chest, as she had done with the guard’s.  “I apologize for this,” she whispered to the spirit.  “Your journey to the afterlife will be only slightly delayed.”

            The spirit osmosed through Kikyo’s white haori, entering her body to join the guard’s.  Kikyo absorbed all the other spirits in this way, feeling their energy buoying her own inside her.  Even then, she would need more.  On the way over, she had felt a great mass of human life force disappear abruptly.  By Kikyo’s speculation, if Naraku had infected the bodies of the villagers downhill from the shrine as he had done with his victims at the nearby bath house, then it stood to reason that InuYasha would use his Meido Zangetsuha to quarantine them all in the netherworld.  In that case, their journey to the afterlife was greatly expedited, though at the cost of Kikyo being unable to use their spiritual energy for herself.

            Having absorbed all available souls, Kikyo gestured to the piles of smoldering bones and clothing.  “We should bury these, now,” she said to Kohaku.  “Then, we will pray, to help the dead find some measure of peace.”

            Kohaku nodded in agreement, then walked over to a wooden tool shed that stood along one of the shrine courtyard’s walls.  Inside, he found several garden implements, including a pair of shovels.  The taijiya took both and handed one to Kikyo; the miko was not averse to physical labor.  Together, the two of them excavated four neat graves in the earth to one side of the cobblestone path connecting the bath house to the worship hall.  They accomplished this in good time; Kohaku’s Shikon-enhanced strength made digging through earth easy, and by the ogre-witch Urasue’s design, Kikyo’s body was significantly stronger than her previous, ‘real’ one, granting her digging ability similar to Kohaku’s.

            Kikyo and Kohaku transferred the remains of the dead to their graves with as much reverence as possible, given the circumstances.  The incinerated bodies were mixed together and proper identification, even _separation_ was impossible.  Kikyo made sure to purify Naraku’s parasites out of them, so at the very least, they wouldn’t be laid to rest with the very monsters that had killed them.

            Filling the graves back up with dirt, Kikyo and Kohaku knelt before them and began to pray for those they had interred there.  Their prayers were as honest and genuine as any they had made in their lives.  They prayed not only for the dead, but for their own fates.  They shared the dead’s misery: Kikyo and Kohaku had both been killed before, placed in a grave by Naraku’s actions, fifty years apart.  They had risen from their graves by unnatural means and they knew that one day, they would return to them, as they each lived on their own borrowed time.

            Finishing the prayer she shared with Kohaku, Kikyo directed her Shinidamachu to reform into their flight pattern, then she and her taijiya bodyguard climbed back aboard.  The miko’s internal energy reserves had been only partially replenished by the few souls she had just absorbed, and she needed more.  In the Sengoku Jidai, the dead were plentiful, their souls able to be gathered in huge numbers by the various provincial wars going on around the country.  Having travelled Japanese lands for several years in her current, semi-undead state, Kikyo knew of a safe place relatively near Sayaka’s shrine, a hot spring surrounded by a forest that bordered on two warring provinces.  There, she could dispatch her soul collectors to the battlefields and, upon their return, refuel herself as she needed.

 

**-To be continued-**


	20. Of a Miko, a Taijiya, and their Voyeurs - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the years since Kagura’s death, Kohaku has matured from a boy to a man, a fact not lost on Kikyo. After leaving Sayaka’s shrine and visiting a secluded hot spring to bathe and ‘recharge’ using her soul collectors, she expresses her attraction to him, attraction he reciprocates. Meanwhile, Kagura and Byakuya enter the skies over Honshu and by Naraku’s act of activating her ovaries, Kagura’s first exposure to the pheromones of springtime breeding season throws her instantly into heat. Kagura and Byakuya use Kanna’s mirror to zero in on Kikyo and Kohaku and catch them in the act of physical love, driving Kagura wild enough that she uses Byakuya to ‘cope’ with her heat. Sex scene: Kikyo/Kohaku.

 

**(Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – Clearing Skies)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3NO6gybEig** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3NO6gybEig)

Riding her giant white bird feather and his giant origami crane, respectively, Kagura and Byakuya lifted off from the open ground in front of Naraku’s castle, ascending into the sullen sky around the island on which the castle sat and blasting off into fast, level flight.  Even though it was broad daylight outside, around an hour past noon, Naraku’s foul aura seemed to suck the sunlight right out of the air, giving his island a distinctive corona of deathly gloom.  Heading due west, it wasn’t until Kagura and Byakuya put at least two miles of open sea between themselves and the castle that they felt unmolested sunlight pouring down upon them.

            Kagura closed her ruby eyes and tilted her head back a bit, relishing in the warmth of the sun beaming down onto her pale skin and the sound and sensation of her beloved wind rushing past her tapered ears, flowing through her silky black hair.  She could still hardly believe she lived again.  Images of the end of her previous life flashed through her mind: Naraku’s evil smile as he impaled her with his tentacles, Sesshomaru’s stoic impassivity as he reached for his Tenseiga, and the heartbroken sympathy of InuYasha and his friends as they arrived at the scene of her death just in time to see her dissolve into miasma-laden ash.

            Along with the fear of whatever evil things Naraku had planned for her, profound excitement swelled in Kagura’s heart.  Most immediately, she anticipated seeing Kohaku again, but she also looked forward to dropping in on _Sesshomaru_ at some point.  If anything could get a reaction out of him, _that_ would.  Kagura was even excited at the thought of seeing InuYasha and his friends; her relationship with the hanyou warrior and his pack had taken a dramatic turn for the better in her previous life’s final hours.  Then, forgiving her for all her transgressions against them, they had been willing to take her into their fold and protect her; she predicted she would come to need that protection in the very near future.

            Then there was Byakuya.  The male wind demon flew abreast of Kagura, and the wind witch glanced over at him.  Despite having fucked him twice already, she didn’t know him very well, but she felt he could be a powerful ally for her going forward.  He seemed generally good-natured, judging by his empathy toward her upon her resurrection and his mindfulness of both her pain and pleasure during the hard, feverish sexual encounters Naraku had pressured them into.  More importantly, he seemed about ready to make his own escape from Naraku, to free himself and Sayaka from the oni lord’s clutches.  By her own admission, Sayaka carried Byakuya’s child, and for Byakuya to be protective of her instead of blindly obedient to Naraku suggested to Kagura that his priorities were somewhat in order.

            Sayaka, too, attracted Kagura’s hopes.  If Naraku was willing to go to the trouble of taking her alive, then the miko prostitute surely bore great power within her.  Less than an hour earlier, Kagura had witnessed some of Sayaka’s power at work as she healed Naraku.  But beyond Sayaka, Kagura knew she and Byakuya would need all the help they could get to escape Naraku.  The oni lord was virtually omnipotent and omniscient, his reach restrained only by the incomplete state of the Shikon no Tama and the illness it had sewn in him. 

            Right at that moment, Kagura and Byakuya were seeking out Kikyo and Kohaku, to capture them and take them to Naraku.  Assuming the two wind demons succeeded, Naraku would use Kikyo as another source for reiki for his ‘healings,’ and since Kohaku had regained his memory and was no longer useful as his puppet, the oni lord would finally reclaim the shard of the Shikon jewel he had implanted in his neck.  Earlier, in the incarnation birthing chamber beneath his castle, Naraku had promised Kagura to spare Kohaku’s life, to extract the jewel shard from him in such a way that he would continue to live.  The wind witch knew it was totally insane to trust Naraku in most circumstances, but this was an exception.  She was counting on Naraku being simply too excited by the hedonistic prospect of watching her fuck the now-grown taijiya warrior to break his word.

            Spotting Honshu’s eastern coastline appearing on the horizon, Byakuya looked over to Kagura as she kept formation with him in the air and shouted to her over the sound of the oncoming wind.  “Kagura!  We’ll be over land soon,” he pointed to the approaching landmass.  “Try using Kanna’s mirror to find Kikyo and Kohaku.”

            Kagura carried Kanna’s silver-framed mirror at her hip; it hung from the dark yellow sash around her waist by a curved steel hook.  She detached it from her sash and took it into her hands very firmly and carefully, not only to avoid accidentally dropping it into the shallowing sea below, but because she was handling a potential weapon of mass destruction.  She turned the glassed side to her with extreme caution, peering into it as if she were peering into the muzzle of a potentially-loaded _cannon_.

            For both Kagura’s and Byakuya’s sake, Kanna’s mirror proved quite inert.  With great relief, the wind witch saw only her own face in the mirror’s polished, reflective glass.  Shen then looked past her reflection to note several fine cracks in it, as if the mirror had been broken, then repaired.  It was as a symbol of Kanna’s death and Kagura felt grimly thankful she hadn’t been alive to witness it.  As she expected Naraku to honor his word concerning Kohaku, she expected him to do the same for Kanna.  Kagura only hoped that by provoking Naraku to revive Kanna, she wasn’t condemning her to further damnation.

            Kagura had seen Kanna use her mirror enough times to have gained a good idea of how it worked.  The mirror operated by a telepathic link to its user; the user thought of something or someone and the mirror communed with otherworldly energies to seek out the desired subject in the surrounding world, then display it in its glass.  The mirror also functioned as a navigational aid; while displaying the subject, it superimposed a small sphere of subtle white light over the image, along the glass’s circular edge.  The light sphere rotated as the mirror’s user changed direction, always pointing to the target.  The only limitation of this configuration was that it did not indicate distance, but Kagura and Byakuya could fly far and fast enough that distance was not a great concern.

            Naraku had modified Kanna’s mirror to function in either Kagura’s or Byakuya’s hands, and Kagura began to think intently about Kikyo and Kohaku, watching the mirror as she did so.  Sure enough, her own reflection dispelled and the image that replaced it was as a straight-downward, bird’s eye view of a vast forest.  The view zoomed in gradually until two humanoid shapes – Kikyo and Kohaku - became visible through the forest canopy, the zoom progressing until Kagura felt she was looking down at them from a height of only a few feet.

            Right away, Kagura discovered that with only a thought, she could control the image’s attitude; she could rotate it, elevate and depress it in a three-dimensional plane.  She angled her viewpoint downward to follow Kikyo and Kohaku from behind, and she was immediately struck by how _tall_ Kohaku appeared as he walked next to the undead miko.  Her heart picking up speed in her chest, she rotated her viewpoint around to view them from the front.

            Kagura could see that Kikyo hadn’t changed a bit, but her ruby eyes widened as she took in Kohaku’s appearance.  Naraku hadn’t been lying; Kohaku had become a _man_.  This led Kagura to ask herself: ‘ _How long have I been gone?’_  The taijiya’s adorable facial spots had cleared up with his maturity and his skin-tight bodysuit contoured to a very powerful, muscular frame.  He was as tall as Kikyo now, just a few inches away from the height of Kagura’s previous body.  However, Naraku’s modifications to Kagura’s new body ensured that when standing near Kohaku, the wind witch would still be able to tower over him. 

            ‘ _Can you see me, Kohaku?  I hope you’ll be as happy to see me as I am to see you,_ ’ Kagura spoke to Kohaku silently.  Gazing at the handsome taijiya through Kanna’s mirror with increasing longing, she could feel her heart hammering by both emotional and _physical_ excitement.  Her female demonic hormones were in turmoil from Naraku’s activation of her sex drive and at that moment, her attraction to the opposite sex was very, very powerful.  Fucking both Naraku and Byakuya at once hadn’t put a _dent_ in it.  She needed _more_ , and she prayed that Kohaku alone, human as he was, could give her body what it needed: a goddamn _baby_.  ‘ _Kohaku, I’m on my way!’_

            Shouting to Byakuya over the wind as she banked her feather to place the directional marker of Kanna’s mirror at the 0-degree position, Kagura called: “Byakuya, I see them!  Follow me!”

            Byakuya turned his origami crane to follow Kagura’s new heading.  Their two-craft formation in the air shifted from ‘line abreast’ to ‘echelon,’ with Kagura in front.  Kagura called on her winds to propel her feather a little faster and Byakuya sped up to match; the male wind demon could tell that his female reflection was _excited_ to see Kikyo and Kohaku in person.  ‘ _Probably more Kohaku than Kikyo_ ,’ he thought to himself.  ‘ _That lucky, demon-slaying devil.’_ For Byakuya, sex with Kagura was incredibly enjoyable, but he predicted she was going to really _rock_ Kohaku’s world.

            Below the two wind demons, sea finally gave way to solid land.  They flew over surf-beaten beach, then an open, grassy plain.  Less than a minute later, though, Kagura could smell something odd in the Honshu air, immediately feeling a wave of sudden dizziness overtaking her.  It was like when Naraku stimulated her ovaries earlier, a flood of demonic estrogen sweeping through her blood for the first time.  This time was markedly more powerful and she opened her glossy red lips to cry out, but no sound left them.  The color in her vision grew dull and grey, throbbing in and out in time with her heartbeat.  The world before her began to spin, first in the figurative sense, then in the quite literal sense as she lost her balance and toppled right off her giant feather.

            Momentarily stunned, Byakuya watched Kagura slump forward atop her feather, then fall over the side.  “ _Kagura!_ ” he cried out to her.  They had been flying at an altitude of hundreds of feet and the Master of Illusions had no intention of finding out if the Wind Sorceress could survive such a fall.  Swiftly, he banked his origami crane to line up its long-necked head with Kagura’s tumbling body, then dove hard to sweep down and catch her from beneath.  As he took her into his arms, his crane shuddered beneath her added weight, its wings flexing visibly, but held firm.

            Then, Byakuya spotted the glint of Kanna’s mirror below him and Kagura; Kagura had lost her grip on it when she fell.  ‘ _The mirror!’_   Now, it was less than a hundred feet from the ground.  “Hang on,” he growled tersely to the wind witch, unsure if she was conscious enough to hear.  Clasping Kagura to him with one arm, he braced himself as best he could and dove again, this time chasing the mirror.

Byakuya saved Kanna’s mirror from _another_ shattering by less than a second.  That window of time was too narrow to allow him to pull out of his dive completely, and the keel of his crane gouged into the grassy ground, digging out a long trough of upturned dirt and ripping open to come to a shuddering halt after several dozen feet.  Thankfully uninjured and with both Kagura and the mirror secure, Byakuya pried himself and his female reflection out of the crumpled paper wreckage, moving them to a nearby patch of undisturbed grass.

            Kagura came back to consciousness with one of her arms slung around Byakuya’s neck as he helped her away from his ruined crane.  He knelt with her upon the seaside Honshu plain and held her in his lap, shaking her shoulders gently and calling her name to try and bring her fully awake.  To her, the sound of his voice was muted and distant, becoming clearer only gradually.  What was _immediately_ clear to her was his body’s warmth and scent.  Her heart began to beat harder and faster as she breathed his scent in, practically nuzzling her face into his throat to get closer to the source of it.

            Byakuya’s cobalt-blue eyes widened and he stilled as Kagura began to writhe in his arms, burying her face into his neck.  A nervous, helpless half-smile crossed his face as he realized that she was sexually _aroused_.  She opened her glossy red lips to take a nice, long _lick_ at his skin and he gasped at the sensation.  “ _Byakuya_ ,” she whispered to him, uttering his name in a breathless, disturbingly sexy purr _,_ probably one of the sexiest sounds he might ever hear out of a woman.

            Kagura felt some of her strength return and almost involuntarily, she used it to flip herself onto all fours, then push Byakuya back onto the grassy ground behind him.  She lay down atop him, grinding and pumping her hips to his.  “Byakuya, I, I…” she faltered, even as she clamped a hand over his lower jaw and took his lips with hers.

            Byakuya felt slightly lightheaded for a moment as a sizable amount of his blood left his brain, his heart pumping it straight into his cock.  With a goddess like Kagura blatantly humping on him for the whole world to see, he became seriously hard, fully erect in just a few seconds.  Moaning softly into her kiss, he grasped her upper arms to pull her _closer,_ letting her grind her belly to his cock through their clothes a little harder.

            _No_.  This is _wrong_.  These thoughts echoed in Byakuya’s sex-addled mind and he took control of himself and Kagura to roll them over, forcing her onto her back.  He thought of Sayaka and how she would feel if she were to see him fooling around with Kagura again.  He broke the kiss he shared with the wind witch with a saliva-slicked gasp and pushed himself up onto his arms, hurriedly backing away from her.

            “Wait.  _Stop,”_ Byakuya panted, extending a flat palm to keep Kagura at bay.  Kagura scrambled onto her hands and feet, a wild look glowing in her ruby eyes as she crouched low, preparing to _pounce_.  “Kagura, stop!”

            Kagura almost _did_ pounce, but Byakuya’s cry cut through the haze in her mind and she restrained herself just in time.  Her heart was racing, her blood like liquid fire in her veins.  “I…I feel so _hot_ ,” she yowled, a greater measure of sanity behind her voice this time.  Her breasts felt heavy and huge beneath her kimono and she held one in a hand, massaging it through the fine silk.  Her nipple grew tight and firm, a delicious, soaking-wet throb of female pleasure building up between her thighs.

            “ _Kami,_ ” Byakuya breathed, realizing what was happening.  “You’re in _heat_.  Naraku made you sexually active today, and now you’re on Honshu, right in the thick of _breeding season_.”

            Anger rose along with Kagura’s intense arousal, her upper lip curling back over her gleaming white teeth.  With the advent of breeding season, the pheromones of reproduction were all around her for her to smell, an invisible wall for her to smack right into unawares.  “That _fucker_ ,” she cursed of Naraku.  “I bet he’s watching me right now, watching and _laughing_.  Why isn’t this affecting _you?_ ”

            “It _is_ ,” Byakuya replied, catching his breath.  His cock was hard as steel beneath his hakama, his balls full of reproductive matter, even after he fucked Sayaka and Kagura twice each in less than twelve hours.  “But I’ve had much more time to get used to it, and I’m a _male_ , so maybe it affects me differently.”  Then, his expression became one of compassion for the borderline _pain_ Kagura was probably feeling at that moment.  “We still have to find Kikyo and Kohaku.  Do you feel well enough to fly again?”

            Kagura shook her head.  “Not on my own,” she rasped, fighting her own biological urge to knock Byakuya over and fuck him into next _month_.  “I…I probably couldn’t fly three feet, as I am.”

            “I can fly us both, then,” Byakuya offered as a solution, drawing a folded-up paper crane from a pocket inside his outer vestment and casting it to his side, using his wind demon magic to enlarge it into its giant flight form.  It was a replacement for the one he’d just crash-landed.

            Kagura looked at Byakuya’s giant crane with worry.  “Sitting so close to you, so high up in the air?  I’ll be _dangerous_ to you.”

            “But I can’t just leave you here,” Byakuya said.  “Naraku’s right about one thing - Kikyo and Kohaku together are so powerful together, I’ll need your help.  And if there’s any hope of taking them without violence, _you’re it_.  They won’t listen to me at all.”

            “What, then?” Kagura asked in mounting exasperation.  Right then, she needed to fuck, to _be_ fucked, to be _bred_.  Overpowering Byakuya, dragging him off into the forest, and having her way with him, whether he wanted it or not, was looking more attractive by the second.

            Byakuya held out his hand with his palm turned upward.  He conjured a flower into it, a large, lovely white chrysanthemum, the Japanese _kiku_.  The kiku opened its overlapped petals to reveal its center, the part that produced its clean, fragrant scent.  “Here,” Byakuya said to Kagura, offering her the flower.  “Breathe this.  It will relax you, put you to sleep.”

            Without hesitation, Kagura accepted Byakuya’s kiku and brought it to her nose, sniffing experimentally.  Immediately, she felt relief from her heat.  Her heart slowed, her blood cooled, and her body calmed down.  She breathed more deeply, taking in as much of the magic kiku’s sedating fragrance as she could.  A welcome drowsiness came over her and Byakuya stepped forward to take her into his arms again as she fell fast asleep.

            Byakuya scooped Kagura up and carried her over to his new magic crane, laying her into it carefully and taking his place beside her along the crane’s centerline.  He called on the wind as she could and his crane lifted off from the ground, guided back to the course they had been following just before her heat struck.

~~~~

 

**(Soundtrack: Rainbow – Lady of the Lake)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUodkI3VsTw** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUodkI3VsTw)

            A little more than an hour before Kagura and Byakuya left Naraku’s castle, Kikyo and Kohaku left Sayaka’s shrine after burying and praying for the dead they had found there.  They flew atop Kikyo’s serpentine Shinidamachu, heading west and further inland.  Their destination was a forest that bordered the territories of two feuding daimyo; the two provincial rulers sought to resolve their differences through war, committing huge numbers of men to the field, with heavy casualties on both sides.  Kikyo knew of a hot spring in that forest, one that was recessed far enough in to not be disturbed by humans while remaining close enough to the feudal battlefield for her Shinidamachu to collect the souls of the dead.  There, she could bathe, and as her soul collectors brought the souls of dead soldiers to her, she could recharge herself fully.

            Kikyo and Kohaku flew for about twenty minutes before arriving over the forest they sought.  Kikyo guided her Shinidamachu to descend through the tops of the trees, then she and Kohaku dismounted once they were close enough to the mossy forest floor.  “This way,” Kikyo pointed, gesturing for her taijiya bodyguard to follow her.  At the same time, Kikyo’s soul collectors climbed back above the trees, heading off to distant, body-strewn battlefields at top speed.

            A short walk later, the trees receded to reveal a steamy hot spring cradled among dozens of large, jutting stones.  Sunlight shone through the gaps in the tree cover above to give the spring an ethereal glow.  Kohaku’s expression, sullen from the scene he and Kikyo had found at Sayaka’s shrine, lightened a bit at the sight.  “It’s pretty here,” he said to Kikyo.

            Kikyo smiled softly at Kohaku’s reaction.  She felt it was a good thing for them to take their minds off the terrible things happening around them whenever they could, however they could.  “While I wait for my Shinidamachu to return, I’m going to bathe.  Would you…would you like to join me?”

            Kohaku’s cheeks flushed visibly by Kikyo’s proposition.  She would want to bathe with him, to be _naked_ with him?  Dismissing the immediate vanity of his own burgeoning sexuality, he looked into the miko’s alluring grey eyes, trying to figure out what she was thinking.  She wasn’t interested in him like _that_ , was she?  Externally, she had the body of a young, beautiful woman, but he suspected that she did not feel the same things that an ordinary woman did.  If that was true, and he accepted her offer to bathe with her, and that shared bath escalated into something _else_ , Kohaku felt he would be using Kikyo for his own pleasure, while Kikyo herself would be unable to take any of her own.

            Therefore, Kohaku turned Kikyo down as graciously as possible.  “No, thank you,” he declined.  “I should watch the forest, in case anyone comes by.”

            Kohaku saw a pang of _something_ flash through Kikyo’s eyes, a strange mixture of sadness and appreciation.  She turned away from him wordlessly, stepping toward the sandy edge of the spring and removing her socks and sandals, then slipping out of her red hakama.  For his own part, Kohaku leapt atop one of the stones lining the spring, putting his back to Kikyo and crouching comfortably to begin watching the forest outside the spring, ready to spring up and engage whatever threat presented itself.  As he did so, the Kikyo shed her white haori and the red yukata she wore beneath it.

            Fully nude now, Kikyo stepped deeper into the spring, its steamy air enveloping her pale body.  She dove beneath the surface of the mineral-rich water, swimming forward and using her hands to guide herself along the spring’s rocky bottom.  Breaking the surface with a gentle splash, she stood up and tossed her head back, her hair flowing down her arched spine in a wet, shimmering black river.

            Kikyo looked down at her hands, seeing the dirt dissolving from her fingers, dirt that had gathered there while she Kohaku buried the burnt bodies Sayaka’s shrine.  She could see the water that had removed the dirt, but she couldn’t _feel_ it.  Right then, she could feel neither heat nor cold, her entire world consisting of one neutral, indifferent temperature.  Such numbness was maddening; if only Kohaku knew how right he was! 

            Through her reiki, Kikyo’s miko training allowed her to commune with the life force of not only the dead, but the living, as well.  She’d read Kohaku’s thoughts the second they crossed his mind.  His heart was utterly pure; he was willing to spare the lives of a pack of lowly kitsune and he was concerned for _her_ pleasure before his own.  By the things she’d done after her unholy resurrection, the hatred she’d held for InuYasha and Kagome, she knew she didn’t deserve the affection of such a man, but she also felt he deserved to know a woman’s touch before his time ran out, because it _was_ running out.  If she could give him that, Kikyo hoped it might make some small atonement to the gods whose service she had offended.

            The Shinidamachu returned quickly from the feudal battlefield, carrying scores of disembodied souls for Kikyo to absorb.  They descended to her through the trees shading the spring in a lazy spiral and one by one, she accepted the spirits they conveyed to her.  She brought those orbs of spiritual energy to her bare chest and pulled them into the spot where her heart would have been, shivering as their energy became her own.  Then, as she reached the last soul the Shinidamachu had to offer, she kept it at arm’s length.

            Looking over a shoulder at Kohaku to make sure he was watching the forest as he said he would, Kikyo returned her attention to the spirit she held.  “I’m sorry, but we _need_ this.  Kohaku…and _me_ ,” she whispered to it began to absorb that last soul through her _palms_.  Its energy diffused evenly over her skin rather than flowing directly into her central reserve.  Adding a touch of her reiki to the equation, she felt her skin begin to change at the molecular level.

            Kikyo’s body was made of clay, grave soil, and whatever bones were left from her real body after her sister Kaede cremated it upon a funeral pyre, following her murder at Naraku’s hands.  It could move without shattering into pieces by the way the ogre-witch Urasue had assembled and animated it.  With Kikyo’s bones serving as a vestigial skeleton, the clay and soil surrounding them acted as cartilage and muscle to bind them together.  Urasue had transmutated the outermost layers of it to work as flexible skin, even going as far as to simulate the thousands of nerve endings embedded in real skin.  Unfortunately, Kikyo broke free from Urasue’s control and killed her before the ogre-witch could connect those nerves to her artificial nervous system, leaving her freely mobile, but unfeeling.

            In the intervening years, Kikyo had found a stopgap solution.  By taking a human soul and manipulating it with her reiki, she could stimulate her latent nerve endings and link them to her mind, able to feel as normal again, if only briefly.  Kikyo knew it was vain and selfish on her part to use a human soul for such a purpose, but she took some consolation that the cause for that person’s death, the ego of two daimyo, was even more so.

            With her skin invisibly energized, Kikyo reached up and touched one of her breasts, groping it experimentally.  She gasped softly as sensation, not numbness, flowed through her body.  She could _feel_ again!  If she had a heart inside her, she knew it would have been pounding in anticipation as she turned in the water to face Kohaku.

            “Kohaku?” Kikyo called sweetly to the taijiya warrior keeping watch over the spring she occupied.

            “Yes, Kikyo… _huh?_ ” Kohaku trailed off as he turned upon the stone he crouched on, taking in the sight of Kikyo’s nudity.  Bathed in tree-filtered sunlight, she radiated with otherworldly beauty as she stepped through the hot spring’s steamy mist, drawing closer to him and becoming fully visible.

            Kohaku blushed hotly and looked away quickly as Kikyo came within arm’s reach of him, rivulets of hot water slipping down her bare skin.  The stone on which the taijiya crouched was elevated a few feet above the bottom of the spring, putting his head slightly above the level of Kikyo’s.  “No, Kohaku,” the miko said, reaching up to cup a slender hand to his face and turn it back to her.  “Look at me, _please_.”

            Kikyo smiled as Kohaku looked into her eyes and her eyes _only_.  “Look at _all_ of me.  Am I beautiful to you?”

            Kohaku swallowed thickly, glancing down over Kikyo’s bare breasts, the flat pane of her stomach, and the elegant mound of hairless female flesh between her shapely thighs.  “Of _course_ you’re beautiful,” he hushed breathlessly.

            Kikyo’s smile became truly _beaming_ at Kohaku’s praise, maybe the first really genuine smile of her resurrected life.  Ever so slightly, she could feel the resulting happiness healing her wounded soul.  Kohaku’s cheek was warm and soft against her hand and she added her other hand to his opposite cheek, cupping his handsome face preciously.  Boldly, she stepped up to him, almost completely out of the water, and took his lips with hers.

            His eyes going wide with surprise, then falling closed in pleasure, Kohaku positively _moaned_ into Kikyo’s kiss.  Instinctively, one of his semi-gloved hands found its way to her trim waist and pulled her closer, leading her to break the kiss with a giggle as he went for her throat.  Her giggle and tremble gave him pause, leading him to pull away just enough to look in her eyes again. “You can _feel_ this, can’t you?” he asked demandingly.

            Kikyo nodded, reaching behind her to cover the hand Kohaku clasped to her waist and push it lower, over her rear.  She squeezed his hand, inviting him to squeeze _her_ in return.  “I’ve used a special spell to give myself physical feeling,” she revealed to him, reveling in her first sexual pleasure in years.  “It doesn’t last long, so let’s make this _count_.”

            Kohaku’s rich brown eyes narrowed with decisive determination.  “Right.”  Together, he and Kikyo began working at the various clasps and ties of his taijiya bodysuit.  The sash around his waist fell first and his sheathed katana impacted the wet sand around the spring softly, followed by his kusarigama.  He kicked out of his boots and Kikyo shoved his opened bodysuit down his shoulders to expose his muscular upper body at last.  He pushed the glossy black mass of it down his hips and legs, stepping out of it to stand clad only in his skimpy white fundoshi.

            Kikyo glanced down Kohaku’s nearly bare body, seeing nothing but finely-toned muscle.  His was the body of a _warrior_ , built through years of constant combat and training.  His erection formed an impressive, straining bulge beneath his fundoshi and she cupped a hand to it, relishing in his pleasured intake of breath.  He pulled her to him for another hungry kiss, then suddenly hesitated to go further.

            “Is it right for us to do this?  To enjoy ourselves like this?” Kohaku asked, seeking guidance from the older, wiser Kikyo.  “The things we’ve seen and done…the things we’ve seen just _today_ …”

            Kikyo’s expression grew sympathetic for Kohaku’s emotional turmoil.  “Our lives are _misery_ ,” she said to him, brushing his tussled brown bangs away from his eyes.  “We’ve done terrible things, and terrible things have been done to _us_.  Sometimes, once in a while, we need to feel…something _good_.”

            Giving Kohaku a quick kiss to his lips, Kikyo pulled away from him and she stooped down to the sandy ground around the spring to pick up her white haori and red yukata, spreading and laying them out upon the sand.  Together, the two garments formed a makeshift bed, and she knelt, then sat upon it in traditional Japanese fashion, extending a hand to Kohaku and inviting him to join her.  The taijiya warrior took her hand and she gently pulled him down to her, laying back upon her bed to pull him atop her.

            “Take me, Kohaku,” Kikyo begged of her protector, getting comfortable upon her bed and spreading her thighs wide.  “Let me feel like a _woman_ again.”

            Heart pounding, Kohaku raised himself onto his knees and reached down to the ties of his fundoshi, pulling them apart and removing the fundoshi at last.  Kikyo found that he was respectably endowed, perhaps not as large as she remembered InuYasha being, but entirely _enough_.  She saw him trembling as he positioned himself at her female entrance, leading her to ask: “Am I your first?”

            Breathing deeply and with careful measure to keep his pulse under control, Kohaku nodded.  “Yes,” he answered.

            “I’m glad.  I’m so happy,” Kikyo smiled with utmost honesty, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as Kohaku began to enter her, filling her up in a single, uncertain yet unbroken stroke.

~~~~

 

            The sedative in Byakuya’s enchanted kiku flower didn’t last very long against Kagura’s enhanced demonic physiology.  Laying beside Byakuya in his giant origami crane as he piloted it, she came awake looking up at the late morning sky, feeling the pheromone-laden wind flowing over her face as the crane moved through the air.  Though conscious, the kiku still dulled the effect of the pheromones and she felt better in control of herself.

            Kagura sat up next to Byakuya, surveying the land passing below the crane.  Beach and plain had become almost total forest.  “ _Nnnn_ …” she exhaled through her nose, rubbing her groggy temples. “Where are we?”

            “I’m not sure, exactly,” Byakuya said.  “We should be closer to Kikyo and Kohaku, now.”

            Kagura shook her head to clear her heat-stricken senses.  “Aren’t you using Kanna’s mirror?”

            “Well, _no_ ,” Byakuya admitted.  “To be honest, I’m a little afraid of the thing…”

            “ _Pussy_ ,” Kagura chastised her male reflection’s cowardice.  “Give it here.”

            Byakuya handed Kanna’s mirror to Kagura as the wind witch ordered and she re-activated it.  As before, the first image of Kikyo and Kohaku it showed to her was a high, downward view at great altitude over dense forest.  As she zoomed into the trees, Kagura picked out a formation of rocks covered in steamy air, a forest hot spring.  Then, as she zoomed all the way into the spring, her heart froze in her chest as her brain processed what her ruby eyes saw there.

            From Kagura’s remote perspective above the spring, a fully nude Kikyo lay back against the sandy bank of the spring, thighs spread wide, with the hips of an equally nude Kohaku buried squarely between them.  “ _What the **FUCK?!**_ ” she cried out.

            Byakuya jolted by the sharp pitch and volume of Kagura’s voice.  With great concern, he turned to look at her as she sat behind him, noting the shocked expression on her face, then leaned over to look in Kanna’s mirror as she did.  His eyes widened, unable to prevent a disbelieving smile from spreading across his face.  Glancing up at Kagura briefly to gauge her ongoing reaction, he peered back into Kanna’s mirror, trying to organize his thoughts as he watched Kikyo and Kohaku have _sex._  

            The male wind demon’s expression became one of sly approval.  To him, Kikyo and Kohaku seemed a good match for each other.  “You know what?” he asked aloud, both to Kagura and to his own, rhetorical self.  “Good for _them_.”

            Kagura tore her view away from the lewd image Kanna’s mirror presented, gazing up at the sky again.  Her blood began to heat up in her veins as the sedative of Byakuya’s kiku wore off completely, given new flame by the sight of Kohaku fucking Kikyo.  _No, not fucking_.  _Love.   _Kikyo and Kohaku were making _love_.

            Fast losing control of herself again, Kagura ordered tersely to Byakuya: “Land.  Land right _fucking_ now!”

            Not willing to argue, Byakuya pitched his crane downward and descended through a gap in the forest canopy large enough to fit.  Kagura hardly waited for the crane to a complete stop before she launched herself out of it, landing on the forest floor in a neat crouch and beginning to pace around the nearby trees as a pensive animal.  She was exactly that: a female animal in _heat_.

            Byakuya hopped out of his crane and left it in its giant, flight size for the time being.  He kept his distance from Kagura, watching her closely.  She took a few more looks at Kanna’s mirror, then set it down on the ground, leaning it up against a nearby tree.  Turning to face Byakuya directly, she spoke her command: “Fuck me.”

            “ _Think,_ Kagura,” Byakuya urged, recognizing the sex-crazed look in the wind sorceress’ ruby eyes.  “This is the heat talking.  You don’t want _me_.”

            Nearly enraged, Kagura began to undress, hastily shedding layer after layer of fine kimono silk until she stood fully, gloriously nude before her male reflection.  She was dripping wet already, droplets of milky female juices slipping down her inner thighs for him to see.  “My _body_ wants you,” she replied heatedly.  She reached down between her legs and ran a fingertip through her sopping pussy, drawing away a long, dribbling thread of her essence and bringing it to her mouth to lick it away.  “ _Please_.  I need it.”

            To Byakuya, Kagura seemed quite serious.  Nude, she was incredibly beautiful, her breasts calling out for his hands and _mouth_ , but he kept himself under control.  “Give me a second,” he said to her, turning himself to face due east, in the direction of Naraku’s castle.

            “What _for?_ ” Kagura demanded.

            Byakuya glanced aside to Kagura as he established a mental connection to the copy of himself he’d left behind with Sayaka.  “To get _permission_ ,” he answered.

 

**-To be continued-**


	21. Of a Miko, a Taijiya, and their Voyeurs - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Kagura and the ‘original’ Byakuya leave Naraku’s castle to find and capture Kikyo and Kohaku, Sayaka is kept company in the castle by Byakuya’s identical copy.  He shows her the garden he maintains in the castle’s center courtyard, to offset the impact of the castle’s otherwise lifeless atmosphere on her psyche.  At her request, he takes her to his bedroom and once there, they deepen their physical and emotional connection.  Meanwhile, Kikyo and Kohaku give themselves to each other in their forest hot spring, seizing the opportunity to explore the physical side of their tragic love, while they still have time.  Then, the original Byakuya contacts Sayaka via his telepathic connection to his copy, asking her for her permission to have sex with Kagura, ostensibly to help the sex-crazed wind witch stay sane while she is stricken with her breeding heat.  Sex scenes: Byakuya/Sayaka, Kikyo/Kohaku, Byakuya/Kagura.

**(Soundtrack: Opeth – Face of Melinda)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybC6iBWLZ6k** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybC6iBWLZ6k)

Sayaka and the copy of himself Byakuya made to keep the miko prostitute company stood at the front entrance of Naraku’s castle, watching as Kagura and the original Byakuya mounted their personal aircraft (giant magic feather and giant magic origami crane, respectively) and lifted off into the gloomy morning sky.  The wind demon twins turned west and the magenta energy barrier around the island vanished briefly, just long enough to let them pass before rematerializing. 

            Sayaka watched the barrier closely, contemplating how she might break through it.  If Naraku’s castle was her prison, then the barrier was its outermost wall.  Since it was a sphere that probably permeated the water and ground beneath her feet, she couldn’t go under or over it like a normal wall; she had to go _through_ , or somehow manipulate Naraku into dissolving it and leaving it that way long enough for her to escape.

            Beyond the rippling, glowing barrier surrounding the castle, Sayaka saw nothing but roiling ocean.  She knew she was standing on one side of a very large, sprawling structure, so her view of the ocean in other directions was obstructed.  However, Byakuya had told her earlier that the castle was situated many miles away from land and she had no reason to doubt him.  Confident in Byakuya’s information, she recognized that the ocean itself could be a more formidable obstacle than Naraku’s energy barrier.  The ocean could not be _turned off_ , as the barrier could.

            Sayaka hailed from a seaside fishing village and she had swum in the waters near it many times over the course of her life, but she felt her swimming ability was recreational, at best.  She had no idea exactly how far away from land Naraku’s castle lay, so assuming she could get outside the barrier in the first place, she understood that to throw herself into the sea and hope for the best was tantamount to suicide.  Furthermore, even if she could build some kind of raft or other flotation device, Byakuya’s ability to fly would make it easy for him to intercept her on the water, should Naraku send him after her.

            Keeping thoughts of escape near the front of her mind, Sayaka turned to Byakuya’s copy.  She looked up at him and he returned her gaze.  His cobalt blue eyes seemed to glow in the relative darkness inside the castle, shining with an intelligence that suggested to her he was not merely a shade of his original.  “Is it really _you_ , in there?” she asked, peering into his eyes to gauge his reaction.

            “Yes, absolutely,” Byakuya answered.  “I am as real as the ‘other’ me.”

            “How does that work, exactly?” Sayaka asked further.  “Splitting up into more than one of yourself?”

            “It is a power that Naraku conferred upon me when he created me,” Byakuya explained.  He reached down and took one of Sayaka’s hands into his own and pulled it to his chest to emphasize his next point.  “You can feel that I’m _physically_ real, but beyond that, I am endowed with a duplicate consciousness.  I am pure youki transmutated into solid matter and that youki reproduces all the functions of my main body: speech and motion, thought and decision making, just to name a few.”

            “And _sex?_ ” Sayaka added.  “Can you _fuck_ as well as the ‘other’ you?”

            Byakuya nodded guiltily.  “I can.  You… _saw me,_ my other copies, with your girls back at your shrine.  I am… _fully_ functional.”

            “Good to know,” Sayaka quipped, raising a thin eyebrow and rolling her eyes as if to save the knowledge for later use.  Then, she looked around the castle’s desolate front hall, seeing Naraku’s skeleton soldiers and skeleton servants as they stood idle, each an ultra-creepy decoration and monument to Naraku’s twisted ego.  “Since Naraku is back to his normal self, and I’m not tied up somewhere, getting tentacle-raped out of my mind, I’m guessing he’s not going to fuck with me for a while.  What do you do for fun around here?”

            “ _Fun?_ ” Byakuya repeated, blinking and joining his hands underneath the sleeves of his haori in contemplation, glancing at Naraku’s hideous skeleton people as Sayaka did.  “I don’t know if it’s possible to have ‘fun’ in this place, but there _is_ a thing I like to do whenever I’m not out on one of Naraku’s missions.”

            “And what’s that?” Sayaka pressed.

            Byakuya smiled in genuine excitement.  “Let me _show you_.”

            Sayaka followed Byakuya away from the castle’s front entrance, deeper into the castle itself.  After moving through its labyrinthine halls for a few minutes, they arrived at the castle’s center, a large, open-air courtyard.  Byakuya slid the shoji door to the courtyard open and revealed to Sayaka a garden of splendor totally incongruous with the overall desolation of the rest of the castle.  The miko prostitute swooned slightly from the rush of richly-oxygenated air that swept over her, filling her lungs and infusing raw, respired energy into her blood.  It was a welcome change from the stale mustiness found elsewhere inside the dark fortress.

            Sayaka stepped into the garden courtyard after Byakuya, taking in the plethora of plant life arrayed before her.  She saw several beds of cultivated wildflowers, a dozen well-trimmed bonsais, and a single large, healthy-looking sakura standing over a small, still pond lined with rounded stones.  Honeysuckle vines wound their way up wooden lattices placed along the courtyard’s inner walls, growing from long, rectangular soil-filled wooden boxes.  Altogether, Sayaka felt there was more _life_ concentrated in this one single place than anywhere else on the island.  Not that such a thing would be hard to accomplish; after all, Naraku had fucking _skeleton zombies_ wandering the castle halls!

            “You did _all_ this?” Sayaka awed to Byakuya, looking around the wind demon’s garden incredulously.  The garden was exposed to the open air and Sayaka looked upward, squinting to see several very bright orbs of concentrated demonic energy levitating in a neat grid, level with the castle roof.  Glowing as miniature suns, the orbs served as sources of substitute sunlight for the plant life in the garden; Naraku’s barrier was in place all day long and the natural sunlight that came through it was filtered to a color that plants did not respond well to.

            “Yes,” Byakuya answered proudly.  He pointed to the big sakura at the center of the garden.  “That tree was the first thing I planted here.  I transplanted it as a sapling some years ago, shortly after Naraku created me, and I’ve been adding on around it ever since.”

            Sayaka knelt beside one of Byakuya’s flower beds and reached out to brush her hands over the silky soft petals of one of his kiku chrysanthemums, one out of a cluster of several.  “Be careful around _those_ ,” he warned.  “They’re a special kind of kiku.  Their scent works as a _sedative_.”

            “You grow _sedative_ flowers?” Sayaka asked as she glanced at Byakuya over a shoulder, more for rhetorical purposes than out of actual suspicion.  She knew Byakuya was Naraku’s pawn and that the oni lord would make him do any number of nefarious things.  Still, the potential _applications_ of a sedative flower were unsettling.

            “They’re useful when I’m out and about for Naraku and I need to sneak into a place without killing anyone,” Byakuya revealed.  “Though they didn’t do me any good at your shrine, did they?  You shot me to pieces before I could get close enough to use them.”

            To Sayaka, Byakuya’s tone was matter-of-fact, not the least bit vengeful.  They had already exchanged apologies for their respective conduct at her bath house, but she still took comfort that he wasn’t holding a grudge for her attempt on his life.  “It’s so _pretty_ here,” she sighed, speaking of the garden in general again.  “I’m amazed Naraku lets you keep something like this inside the castle, given how he probably got Death himself to be the _architect_.”

            “Naraku…is a harsh master,” Byakuya mused.  “He answers disobedience with cruel punishments, but he does grant _indulgences_ from time to time.  This garden…and _you_.”

            Sayaka stood up from Byakuya’s flower bed and turned to face the wind demon directly.  A furtive expression crossed his handsome face and he extended a hand to her.  She took it with her own, allowing him to pull her closer to him.  A perverse sexual chemistry was ever-present between them, fueled by his wind demon pheromones, and she could feel it seeping into her blood, driven by her heart to flood her entire body with the welcome warmth of physical desire.  His child grew in her belly at that very moment and her body could sense that he, the father, was near, preparing itself to receive him again.

            “The reason you’re not getting ‘tentacle-raped out of your mind’ right now is because Naraku has promised you exclusively to _me_ ,” Byakuya explained to Sayaka, reaching up to brush her silky black bangs away from her alluring golden eyes.

            “ _Good_ ,” Sayaka approved with complete seriousness, cupping Byakuya’s large, yet elegant male hand to her cheek, nuzzling into it.  “If someone’s going to fuck me without paying for it, I rather it be you, not him…though I’m guessing he didn’t agree to that out of the goodness of his heart.  What did he demand from you for such an accommodation?”

            “The usual.  Blind, unswerving obedience,” Byakuya replied.  He stroked a thumb over Sayaka’s smooth cheek, contemplating her beauty as if to weigh it and the soul behind her eyes against the danger of defying Naraku.  For the moment, to _serve_ Naraku was to protect Sayaka, assuming the oni lord kept the word he had given the night before.  “If it keeps you safe and out of his hands, I’ll give him that obedience.”

            Sayaka stepped closer to Byakuya and pressed herself up to him, her full breasts flattening against his firm, muscular chest through their clothes as she lifted herself up onto her toes and kissed him.  Despite the sexual nature of their relationship up to that point, she kept the kiss short and chaste, lowering herself back down and pulling away a bit to look up into his eyes.  “I appreciate that,” she hushed.  “But that won’t last forever.  I want to _escape_ this place and start putting my life back together as soon as possible.  Naraku is an obstacle to that.  If I try to leave, he might send you after me, or he might pursue me himself, and you can be damn fucking sure I’ll fight back.  I won’t let myself be taken alive a second time, pregnant or not.  What will you do _then?_ ”

            “If… _when_ it comes to that, as ever, I will be Naraku’s pawn,” Byakuya predicted grimly.  “He has the power to _make me_ do things, whether I want to or not.  You saw that power at work at your shrine.  Promising you to me is not strictly necessary to get me to obey him…it only makes my obedience less _expensive_ on his part.  When it comes down to a choice between you and him, he’ll make that choice for me and I will be your enemy.”

            To Sayaka, if Byakuya was ultimately her enemy, then he was the enemy she felt safest around.  She couldn’t resist her attraction to him any longer and she closed in for another kiss, one much harder, more passionate and explicitly sexual than before.

            Byakuya _moaned_ into Sayaka’s lips as she overcame her inferior height to _ravish_ him from below.  He opened his mouth instinctively and she seized the opportunity to thrust her tongue to his.  Their tongues entwined and danced back and forth, mimicking the act of fluid-drenched physical love their bodies were preparing to consummate.  The miko prostitute broke the kiss with a soft gasp, a thin thread of her saliva and his linking their tongues for a moment.  Hiking a thigh up his side and balancing her weight on a single foot, she began to pump her hips to his, feeling his cock beginning to swell up beneath the fine silk of his clothes.

            Sayaka worked a hand down between her body and Byakuya’s as she ground on him, cupping his most male area to feel him more directly.  Through the loose-fitting hakama he wore, she could feel he was already close to full erection, his balls heavy and full and _tight_ just beneath.  She _grasped_ his cock through his hakama and began to jack him off nice and slow, building his pleasure until he verged on erupting, then backing off over and over.  His husky breathing became uncharacteristic _growls_ of rising demonic passion and she smiled by the control she had over him.

            “Your _bedroom_ ,” Sayaka whispered to Byakuya, nipping playfully at one of his tapered youkai ears.  “You have one, don’t you?  Take me there, _right now_.”

            In a flash of male wind demon speed and strength, the highly-aroused Byakuya swept Sayaka off her feet and left his garden to dash through the halls of Naraku’s castle, completely ignoring all the skeleton servants and soldiers they encountered to reach his bedroom in short order.  He set Sayaka down onto her feet just long enough to open his room’s shoji door without battering through it, then urged her inside and followed her in, snapping the door closed behind him.

            Sparsely furnished like Naraku’s den, Byakuya’s bedroom lay along the castle’s outer perimeter, near the western edge of the island on which the castle sat.  A single, glassless window had been fitted to its outer wall, allowing Sayaka and Byakuya to look out over the sea.  Midday in hour, Naraku’s magenta energy barrier interfered with the sunlight shining down from above, and the light that reached the bedroom poured into it through the window to cast everything inside in a rich, glowing bloody hue.  Sayaka found the resulting atmosphere fittingly erotic: it was the color of blood burning in passion, pumping through two hearts racing in pleasure.

            To Sayaka’s relief, the air inside the bedroom, linked to the outside air by the open window, smelled considerably fresher than the air deeper in the castle; it was almost of the same quality as the garden.  Feeling Byakuya’s eyes on her, she walked over to the wind demon’s bed with a sultry sway in her hips.  The bed was a large, white futon surrounded by a conical veil of lilac silk anchored to the ceiling, and as she stood before it, the miko prostitute began to undress with disciplined decorum.  She slipped out of her red hakama, letting it pool upon the tatami floor around her feet, then shed her white haori, leaving herself wearing only her red inner yukata.

            Byakuya approached Sayaka from behind, kissing at one side of her neck and guiding his hands around her waist to pull at the thin sash holding her yukata closed.  With the sash undone, he eased her yukata down her pale shoulders and let it fall away, baring her body completely.  He took the opportunity to feel her up, holding her ample breasts in his hands and contemplating their weight and warmth.  Then, he moved one of his hands lower, gliding it down over her flat belly to cup it to the smooth, hairless mound between her thighs.

            Sayaka tilted her head back and rested it on Byakuya’s shoulder as he played with her, massaging one of her breasts and dipping one of his long, male fingers into her sex.  Lifting one of her thighs and spreading it away from the other to give him better access, she let him work her up for a bit, then reached down to grasp his wrist and thrust against his hand, increasing the pleasurable sensation for herself.  He added another finger inside her and curled them to search for the raised, sensitive ‘sweet spot’ along her vagina’s anterior wall.  Despite the length of his fingers, from his position behind her, he could only graze the edge of it, his rhythmic pumping bringing her only to a small, yet welcome climax.

            Her heart thumping quickly from that frustratingly little slip of an orgasm, Sayaka pulled on Byakuya’s wrist, drawing his fingers out of her.  A dribbling thread of her transparent female cream linked his fingertips to her pussy for a moment, stretching out and breaking when it became too long and thin.  She brought his fingers to her mouth to suck them clean, then lowered her thigh to stand on two feet again and turned in place to face him.  She began divesting him of his own clothes, starting with the navy vestment he wore outside his light blue haori.  She worked slowly and methodically, removing each of his garments only as they were designed, taking care to avoid damaging any of them.  Once each one was free from his body, she folded them up and laid them out on the tatami flooring next to the bed, along with her own clothes.  This signified how their encounter would progress; they were about to have a good, hard fuck, but it would be an _orderly_ fuck.

            Sayaka smoothed her palms over the broad, muscular panes of Byakuya’s bare chest, relishing in his powerful physique.  His body was as a ‘lite’ version of Naraku’s: still big and strong, but relatively more compact.  Giving him another kiss to his glossy red lips, she bent her head to kiss his sternum, kissing her way down his toned abdomen as she lowered herself to her knees in front of him.  She untied his hakama and let it fall away from his hips, her golden eyes lighting up in sexual _glee_ as his big, hard cock and heavy, hairless balls greeted them.  She grasped his cock for him to see, fisting its impressive length a few times and giving its broad, oozing head an affectionate _lick._ Releasing him reluctantly, she then encouraged him to step out of his hakama.  She then folded the hakama up and placed it atop the rest of his clothes beside his bed.

            Now equal with Sayaka in nudity, Byakuya parted the veil around his bed, allowing the beautiful miko prostitute to saunter through it.  He followed her in and Sayaka sat down on the large futon inside, folding her legs beneath her as she raised a hand to him, inviting him to take it.  He did so, and she pulled him down to sit beside her, then reached around to the back of his head to pull away the tie that held his hair up into its high ponytail.  Smiling and closing his eyes, he tilted his head back and shook it from side to side to free his hair completely, those perfect ebony tresses of his spilling down his shoulders and spider-branded back.

            Taking the initiative, Sayaka leaned in to kiss Byakuya again, pressing forward on him to lay him back against his bed.  His long, glossy black hair gathered upon his pillow in a shimmering pool and she lay down atop him, mating the full length of her body to his and joining their warmth into one.  His cock was long, thick, and throbbing hard now, trapped between their firm stomachs for them to feel.  She pumped her belly to it to get him good and wild beneath her, and just as she spread her thighs to straddle his hips, reaching down between their bodies to align his cock with her pussy, he grasped her upper arms, holding her still.

            Sayaka looked down at Byakuya with some confusion.  “Wait,” he said softly to her.  His wind demon sex drive was not easily suppressed when it could sense he was so close to having a female, so stopping the act moments before full intercourse began took great discipline on his part.  “I want you.  Do you want me?”

            “What kind of question is _that?_ ” Sayaka laughed.  She gave Byakuya’s big cock a long, slow, well-lubricated grind with her pussy, shivering by the pleasure it caused.  “Of course I want you.  I’m fucking _soaking_ for you.”

            Byakuya smiled half-heartedly.  “I mean…do you want _me?_   Do you _want_ me?” he said, with alternate emphasis.

            Sayaka didn’t laugh this time, recognizing the conflict in Byakuya’s gorgeous, cobalt blue eyes.  Closing her legs, she slipped off him to lay on her side next to him, looking down at him.  She stroked his broad, muscled chest in wide circles as if to comfort him.  “What’s _wrong?_ ”

            To Byakuya, ‘What’s wrong?’ was a simultaneously terrible and hilarious question for Sayaka, of all people, to ask _him_.  She was a prisoner in Naraku’s castle, unexpectedly pregnant and forced to feed her reiki to Naraku with increasing frequency.  The women with which she’d worked at her shrine were all dead and her home village was destroyed.  For her, there was fucking _plenty_ wrong! 

            “We haven’t known each other very long,” Byakuya said to Sayaka after some introspection, enjoying the warmth of her hand over his heart.  She was a miko, able to purify demonic flesh with her reiki, so by allowing her hand so near his heart, he was _willfully_ giving her an opportunity to kill him, if she wanted to.  “We’ve known each other for what, twelve _hours?_   We’ve already had sex a few times…and you’re already pregnant.  I guess what I’m trying to say is…Naraku has promised you to me, but that doesn’t mean we have to do _anything_ , if you don’t want to.”

            Sayaka was stunned into silence by the purity of Byakuya’s heart.  “How did a monster like Naraku produce an _angel_ like _you?_ ” she asked, more for rhetoric than in expectation of a real answer.  She bent her head down and kissed him sweetly to reassure him.  Pulling away, she added: “Let me say this as plainly as I can.  I _want_ you.”  On ‘want,’ she gave an emphatic, positive nod with her head.  “I’m a prostitute.  Sex is my profession, so keep me in _practice_.”

            Encouraged by Sayaka’s words, Byakuya rose up beside her and pressed her onto her back.  Happily, she spread her thighs wide for him and he positioned his muscular hips between them, taking his cock in hand to guide it down to her dripping pussy.  He gazed into her golden eyes as he entered her, filling her up until his big, heavy balls came to rest against her rear and the head of his cock kissed her womb.  For the third time in less than a day, their bodies were one.

            Sayaka threw her arms around Byakuya’s neck, clasping her hands together behind it.  Feeling his cock pulsing inside her by his powerful demonic heartbeat, she tilted her hips a little to give him the best angle.  “Now _take me_ ,” she commanded to him.  “Fuck away that doubt in your heart.”

            Byakuya withdrew from Sayaka’s pussy by a single inch and sank back in, her creamy female juices flowing around his throbbing cock with a soft _gush_ in the quiet, intimate atmosphere of his bedroom.  He sank back in to press firmly against her cervix and pulled back again, a little further each time until he was giving her all eleven inches of himself on every thrust.  Their first time together, back in Sayaka’s bath house, had been a depraved rape and impregnation on Naraku’s orders.  Their second time, in one of the baths in Naraku’s castle, had been a sexual reconciliation for that depravity.  Now, upon their third encounter, they were _making love_ , joining their hearts as well as their bodies in honest, open passion.

            Muscles rippling beneath his pale skin, Byakuya pumped deeply into Sayaka, his powerful strokes causing her full breasts to bounce beautifully on her chest.  For her own part, the miko prostitute relished in the pleasure, tilting her head back against one of Byakuya’s pillows and arching her spine to feel warm, clean bedsheets contouring to her from below.  It had been a long time since she’d had sex with just one man, in a _bed_ , of all places.  Crossing her legs behind Byakuya’s back, she lifted her hips to meet his beat for beat, taking him as deep as her body would allow.

            Sayaka pulled Byakuya down for a quick, scorching-hot kiss, then pushed him away to look down between her jiggling breasts and watch his cock, dripping with a heavy coat of her juicy female cream, plunge in and out of her body.  “Harder,” she ordered to him, feeling the heat of orgasm beginning to rise in her blood.  “Please, _harder!_ ”

            Byakuya went harder as Sayaka wanted, the soft, rhythmic _gush_ of his cock pistoning into her overtaken by the firm _slap_ of his muscular hips meeting her inner thighs.  Orgasm threatened him, as well, his balls growing tense and his cock beginning to swell ever larger and harder as he shoved it past her silky wet, strangling tight vaginal tissues.  Pulling out of her abruptly with a messy _squelch_ , he lifted her left thigh and slipped her calf over his left shoulder, leaning over her to press her thigh back to her chest and fold her wide open.  He sheathed himself inside her again and used a small, carefully-measured fraction of his demonic strength to really _hammer_ away at her cunt, burying the head of his cock to her womb over and over.

            The change of Byakuya’s angle inside her and his added speed and force set Sayaka off.  Mewling out, she writhed beneath him, lost in ecstasy.  Her pussy flooded over with her cream around his cock and her rippling internal contractions sucked him into climax with her.  Groaning her name softly, he shoved himself balls-deep into her and held himself there, his cock throbbing and pumping big loads of his hot, creamy seed directly into her womb.

            _Pump, pump, pump_.  “Fuck, _yes!_ ” Sayaka gasped to Byakuya, her heart racing as she felt every ejaculation bursting out of him and into her.  Thick spurts of his rich, white reproductive matter flooded through her cervix, pumping her womb to brimming fullness and coursing into her ovaries.  By her recent impregnation by him, she didn’t have an unfertilized egg ready inside her, but if she had, she knew it would have been _his_.  He began to move again, pumping his spewing cock in and out of her to keep his climax going as long as he could.  Soon, she overflowed around him, his seed oozing back out of her and dribbling down her rear to soak into the bedsheets beneath her.

            The youki in Byakuya’s cum passed through the walls of Sayaka’s womb and pussy, entering her blood to travel throughout her body.  Rather than neutralize it outright, her body _metabolized_ it, converting it into reiki to replenish the reserves Naraku had drained.  Along with the orgasm the presence of his seed caused, Sayaka clearly perceived _relief_ as her internal spiritual energy buoyed unexpectedly.  She could ‘recharge’ through sex!  If it wasn’t enough to allow her to spring back completely after a draining, it would at least take the edge off the feeling of disorienting weakness that followed.

            Still mostly erect by his demonic sexual constitution, Byakuya drew his cock out of Sayaka, the big head of it leaving her body with a _pop_ of broken suction.  She blushed furiously for him, acutely aware of his semen bleeding out of her and further soiling the bedsheets.  Slipping her leg off his shoulder and laying it back down, he smiled and leaned over her to give her a playful, thankful kiss, then began to kiss his way down her body.  He paid special attention to her lovely breasts, suckling at each one in equal amounts, then slinked his way lower, over her flat belly to get at her pussy.

            Servicing a woman after sex was a habit Byakuya had picked up from InuYasha.  He’d spied on the hanyou warrior more than a few times as he engaged with the women of his pack.  Whether InuYasha was enjoying a nice, slow missionary with Kagome or taking Sango fast and hard from behind, he always made sure to clean his female lover’s pussy thoroughly, to spare her from the lewd discomfort of feeling his copious seed drooling out of her for the rest of the day.  Thus, Byakuya’s sexual behavior was a composite of what he had inherited from Naraku and what he had learned by watching InuYasha and even Sesshomaru.  He felt inclined to emulate the inu brothers much more than his dark creator; InuYasha, especially, had access to _four_ completely willing women (Kagome, Sango, Shizu, and Shiori) at almost any time, while Naraku, well- endowed and darkly beautiful as he was, seemed to have to take what he wanted from a woman by _force_.

            Sayaka sighed dreamily as Byakuya cleaned her with his mouth, reaching down between her thighs to touch his head and comb her fingers through his silky black hair.  She gazed up at the bed’s veil above her, losing herself in its gently billowing silk.  With the natural, chemical high of sex still flowing in her blood, she found temporary solace from the pain in her heart.  She was the sole survivor of her village and her shrine, but with Byakuya’s seed still fresh in her belly, she could _forget_ for a while. 

            When Byakuya was finished sucking his own cum out of Sayaka, he crawled forward to lay over her again, his lips and chin glistening with a mixture of his semen, saliva, and her female fluid.  Her golden eyes glowing with passion, she brought him down for a kiss to taste their combined essence.  Ending the kiss after a few long, enjoyable moments, he rolled off her and slipped an arm underneath her knees, lifting her rear off his bed to free the bedsheets she lay upon.  Throwing the sheets back, he slipped beneath them and let Sayaka cuddle up to his side, using the sheets to cover their cooling bodies.  Clasping together, they lay in comfortable, post-coital silence, until Sayaka remarked: “Heh…aside from lounging around in your garden, there’s nothing to do in this castle but eat, sleep, and _fuck_.  Without Naraku around, this could be a _vacation_.”

            Soon, Sayaka was asleep and Byakuya held her close to share his warmth with her beneath the sheets, receiving her warmth in return and drifting off himself.  After about an hour of pleasant rest, the male wind demon woke to a telepathic voice calling his name.  ‘ _Byakuya…_ ’  The voice was not Naraku’s, but his own, that of the original Byakuya that had conjured him.  In effect, he was talking to himself.  ‘ _Byakuya!’_

Separating himself from Sayaka, Byakuya’s copy sat upright in his bed, turning his head to face the direction he perceived the voice as originating from.  He looked due west, gazing out his bedroom window over the sea, through Naraku’s barrier.  He visualized the original Byakuya as he stood surrounded by dense forest, several dozen miles away.  ‘ _Yes?_ ’ he replied to his original by telepathy.  ‘ _I hear you.’_

            ‘ _Is Sayaka with you?_ ’ the original Byakuya asked.

            ‘ _Yes, she’s here,_ ’ Byakuya’s copy replied.  ‘ _Just so you know, we just had sex.  She initiated it…so I hope you’re not jealous.’_

 _‘How could I be jealous of *myself*?’_ the original Byakuya posed in bemused rhetoric.  ‘ _Besides, your experience of it will be mine once we become whole again.  On the topic of jealousy, Kagura has gone into heat over here.  She wants me to ‘take care’ of her and I worry that if I don’t, she won’t be in top form once when we meet Kikyo and Kohaku.  I admit I’d like to help her, for obvious reasons, but I’d also like Sayaka’s permission.’_

Byakuya’s copy turned as he sat in his bed and shook Sayaka awake.  The miko prostitute roused slowly, having been sleeping comfortably.  She opened her golden eyes and looked up at Byakuya’s copy, seeing an urgent expression upon his face.  “ _Mmmm_ …” she yawned, stretching her arms above her head.  “What is it?”

            “It’s Kagura,” Byakuya’s copy said.  “She’s gone into heat, probably because of the scent of breeding season in the air over on the mainland.  She wants sex from the ‘other’ me, and he wants your permission to give it to her.”

            “ _My_ permission?” Sayaka repeated, sitting up and blinking away the sleep from her eyes.  “Why would he… _you…_ want permission from _me?_ ”

            “You bear my child,” Byakuya answered, speaking on behalf of himself, the copy, and the original.  “Despite this twisted situation Naraku has put us in, as far as I’m concerned, that makes you my _wife_ and me your _husband_.  Shouldn’t a husband seek his wife’s blessing in all things?  Of course, a properly monogamous husband even shouldn’t even _contemplate_ another woman in this way, but this is a special case.”

            “Of _course_ you have my permission,” Sayaka consented, reaching out to stroke one of Byakuya’s cheeks with a hand.  “Give Kagura all she needs, but only if you can give the same to _me_ , too.”

            Byakuya’s copy covered Sayaka’s hand with one of his own, squeezing gently.  “I think I can manage that,” he smiled seductively.  Moving on Sayaka, he lay her back and settled his hips between her thighs as she spread them apart for him.  His body was hers to command and he reached full erection for her in very little time.  ‘ _Byakuya,’_ he transmitted by telepathy to the original Byakuya as he surged forward, entering Sayaka for the second time that day and the fourth overall.  ‘ _Sayaka approves!’_

~~~~

 

**(Soundtrack: Cauldron – Serpent Sorceress)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKyrKdFDx4k** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKyrKdFDx4k)

            Inexperienced in sexual matters, Kohaku didn’t last long inside Kikyo as they lay on the sandy bank of their forest hot spring.  Having led a warrior’s life, under constant and significant emotional stress from the specter Naraku cast over the land and with no other outlet for his sexual energy, he was no stranger to masturbation.  Kikyo’s pussy, or at least the ogre witch Urasue’s approximation of one, felt immeasurably better than his hand, milking him into orgasm after just a few thrusts.  His balls tightened to his body and his cock throbbed to pump thick loads of his seed deep inside her.  Being ‘merely’ human, he didn’t have the same reach or potency of ejaculation inside Kikyo that the better-endowed Sesshomaru or InuYasha had with their own women, and so his seed pooled up against the mouth of her womb and warmed it from the outside, rather than pumping through to the riches beyond.

            “I’m sorry,” Kohaku gasped through his pleasure, hanging his head and almost weeping in his shame.  Kikyo didn’t get an opportunity to this very often, with _anyone_.  To his knowledge, this was her first sexual encounter in at least _sixty years_.  Her opportunities for sex were constrained by both her lack of available partners, the short window of sensation granted by her spell, and the cost of using that spell.  Therefore, he had just wasted a good deal of her preciously limited time by his poor performance.  “I’m so _sorry!_ ”

            “No, _no!_ ” Kikyo comforted honestly, cupping Kohaku’s handsome face with both hands and tilting his head back up to look at him again.  “Please, don’t be embarrassed.  It’s okay, really.  I feel your seed in me.  It’s so thick and warm.  God, it’s so _good_.”

            Though she did not join Kohaku in climax, Kikyo relished in the sensations she _did_ feel.  For her, feeling anything _at all_ was a miracle.  Her last lover had been InuYasha, more than sixty years before, and the few times she’d made love with him, he’d been careful to avoid coming inside her.  Now, she felt hot semen in her belly for the first time in her life, however ‘life’ for her was defined.  She wished she could give Kohaku’s precious seed purchase within her; he so greatly deserved a son or daughter to carry on his line, but her body was incapable of producing new life, barely alive as it was.

            Kikyo brought Kohaku down for a sweet kiss and wrapped her arms around him to pull him close and embrace him as the aftershocks of orgasm continued to pulse through him.  For her, an orgasm of her own was not so important as the love and contentment she was feeling right then.  After resting atop Kikyo for a few minutes, Kohaku could feel himself swelling and hardening again by his attraction to her, and he shifted his hips against hers to move himself inside her.

            “Do you still feel this?” Kohaku asked hopefully to Kikyo, pushing himself up onto his muscular arms to gaze down at her.

            Kikyo nodded, sliding her hands down to Kohaku’s trim waist and pulling him closer to encourage him as deep as possible.  “Yes.  Please, do me _again_.”

            Kohaku began to move inside Kikyo slowly, his thrusts lubricated by his own seed now.  The sensation of her vaginal walls gliding back and forth around him was breathtaking as ever, but he could feel that orgasm was much further off now, his pleasure building more slowly and controllably.  His heart raced in his chest, beating in his ears for him to hear clearly.  He wasn’t _fucking_ , he was _making love_ to the woman he loved, the woman he was _in love_ with.

            “Yes, Kohaku, _yes!_ ” Kikyo cried, lifting her hips to meet Kohaku’s beat for coital beat.  “You feel so good.  You’re making me _come!_ ”

            Emboldened by Kikyo’s praise, Kohaku began to move harder and faster inside her, pouring a little of his incredible, Shikon-enhanced strength into his thrusts.  By the steamy heat of the spring’s air and his own exertions, perspiration glistened on his tanned skin, the highly-refined muscles in his arms, hips, rear, and flanks rippling visibly by his deep, rhythmic pumping into his miko mistress’ welcoming body.  He was moving forcefully enough to get her breasts jiggling gently on her chest and that erotic sight, combined with the expression of female ecstasy written so plainly on her lovely face, had his pleasure blossoming deep within him.

            “ _Nnnngh…Kikyo!_ ” Kohaku grit, feeling orgasm almost upon him again.  His balls were tense to his body and he felt a pulsating throb building deep at the root of his cock.  He fought against this second orgasm with every fiber of his will, striving to bring Kikyo to some level of satisfaction, however novice he was.  “Come for me.  Please, come for _me!_ ”

            Kikyo grabbed one of Kohaku’s wrists and pulled it to her, causing him to rebalance the weight of his upper body onto his other hand, bracing it against the spring’s sandy bank directly above her head.  She thrust his hand down between their bodies, guiding his fingers to her throbbing, hooded clit.  “ _Here_ ,” she instructed to him.  “Rub _gently_.”

            Kohaku let Kikyo show him the speed and rhythm of clitoral stimulation that pleased her, then emulated it for himself as she pulled her hand away.  The effect was immediate, her cries becoming higher and breathier as he worked her up.  She threw her head back against the bed she’d made with her clothes, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth as she felt herself slipping into orgasm at last.  For Kohaku, the strange position he had to sustain as he rubbed Kikyo’s clit, held himself up above her, and thrust inside her, all at the same time, had some very _interesting_ muscles in him burning in protest.  That loss in concentration and the sensation of Kikyo’s inner muscles rippling and _gripping_ around him pulled him over the edge.

            “ _Kikyo_ …” Kohaku gasped as he heard Kikyo cry out to the forest around them, feeling the clenching, releasing throb of his own orgasm begin.  He moved his hand from between their bodies and supported his upper body on both hands again, to his muscles’ relief.  He clenched his hands, his fingers dragging on the fine, white silk of Kikyo’s haori and digging deep gouges in the sand beneath.  His miko mistress was _coming_ , and she was coming for _him!_ The next sound out of his mouth was a _roar_ , one of bestial triumph.  “ ** _KIKYO!_** ”

            Kohaku managed a few more savage thrusts into Kikyo’s cunt, then hammered himself to the hilt in her and held himself there as he came.  Thick, white semen burst out of the head of his cock hard and fast, thrashing against her womb, and he counted the spurts, each one timed with his heartbeat.  One, two, three, _four_ , then gradually weaker ones afterward.  This orgasm was less _productive_ than the first; after all, he had a _human’s_ balls, not those of a youkai.  Still, it was monumental in terms of raw pleasure, and Kikyo’s pleasure resounded with it.

            Kikyo felt Kohaku trembling above her and she received him into her arms, holding him to her to lay with him in perfect, post-coital silence.  Briefly, Naraku was forgotten for both of them, everything in the world feeling perfectly _right_.  After a minute or so, he pushed himself back up onto his arms with a cute grunt and looked down into her, gazing into her smoky grey eyes with an expression she hadn’t seen on a man’s face for a long, long time, not since _InuYasha_.

            “I love you,” Kohaku professed to Kikyo, offering her his heart as he had his body.

            Simultaneous elation and terror overtook Kikyo at Kohaku’s words.  Only now, so near the end of her life and Kohaku’s life, had the two of them found love.  They had just enough time left to recognize that love before it was stripped away by one or both of their deaths.  She knew that she might well be the one to take the jewel shard keeping him alive, and in that event, she could only hope she wouldn’t outlive him by much.

            Still, Kikyo embraced Kohaku’s love for what it was, and not how it would end.  Right then, it was _all_ she could do.  “I love you, too.  I have for quite a while, now,” she requited to him.

            Overjoyed, Kohaku bent down to take Kikyo’s lips with his again, but gradually, her mouth and lips grew uncoordinated, unresponsive to the stimulation.  The limited time her use of a spirit her Shinidamachu had brought to her had finally run out.  Feeling how she no longer responded to him, he pulled back from her, looking down at her with concern to see numb sadness returning upon her face.  Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and opened her mouth, breathing outward to allow the spirit she had interred in her to escape as transparent blue incandescent mist.

            “Thank you,” Kikyo bid to the spirit as it coalesced above her and Kohaku.  “Be at peace, now.”

            Kikyo perceived _gratitude_ from the spirit she had used.  Perhaps it was because its last experience on Earth had been one of pleasure, however vicarious.  It flew away to resume its journey to the next world and Kohaku pulled out of Kikyo, a thick glob of his seed drooling out of her after him.  Cleaning her up through oral sex didn’t occur to him as it would have to InuYasha or Sesshomaru, and he didn’t have any kind of rag or handkerchief available to him, so he used the green sash of his taijiya bodysuit.  Appreciative of his efforts, Kikyo kept her legs spread wide to give him the access he needed, and he wet his sash with the water of the hot spring to gently wipe his seed away from her sex.

            With Kikyo clean, Kohaku soaked his sash in the spring again to rinse it out and wrung it as dry as possible, reaching for the rest of his suit.  Kikyo reached for her own clothes and the two of them dressed in lethargic, commiserative silence, reluctant to leave the place in which they had known such honest physical and emotional love.  “Where do we go from here?” Kohaku asked as he clasped his taijiya bodysuit shut and retied his green sash around his waist.

            Kikyo couldn’t help but give Kohaku a sly smile.  “In terms of our next destination, or in terms of our _relationship?_ ” she asked back as she tied her white haori and pulled the waistline of red hakama over it.

            Kohaku smiled, too, greatly reassured by Kikyo’s levity.  “ _Both_ ,” he said.

            Fully dressed again, Kikyo faced Kohaku square-on.  “We’re running out of time.  As ever, Naraku wants to kill me and he wants to complete the jewel, so he wants to kill _you_ , too.  Our romance may be short-lived…and our only opportunities to express it come with the souls of the dead.”

            “Even if this the first, last, and _only_ time we get to do this, I’m glad we did,” Kohaku said.  “If we never get to have each other like this again, I’ll stay with you anyway.”

            “Thank you,” Kikyo gratified.  “If I see another chance for us to be together, I swear to you that I’ll _seize it._ In the meantime, our next destination is InuYasha, Kagome, and their friends, wherever they may be.  I must speak with Kagome about we saw today, in that village along the sea.”

            “Right,” Kohaku agreed.

            Once clothed and with all their belongings secure, Kikyo and Kohaku left the spring by means of her Shinidamachu, putting their dark pilgrimage on hold to seek out InuYasha, Kagome, and their pack of friends.

~~~~

 

            Some miles away from Kikyo and Kohaku as they made love, the original Byakuya ended his telepathic conversation with his copy, having indirectly received from Sayaka the permission to fuck Kagura he sought.  He turned to face his naked female reflection as she paced pensively a few feet away, giving her a nod and a reassuring smile.  “Sayaka has agreed to let me help you,” he said.

            “Thank _God_ ,” Kagura praised.  Her body was positively _smoldering_ with lust and she could feel her pussy pulsing between her thighs, her juices dripping freely from it.  “I’ll have to express my appreciation to her somehow.  I’m not sure how much longer I could have waited.  Now, get over here and _fuck me!_ ”

( **Soundtrack: Dark Tranquillity – The Mundane and the Magic)**

[ **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A2v9No_ey0** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A2v9No_ey0)

            With the issue of Sayaka’s approval out of the way, Byakuya advanced on Kagura enthusiastically, backing her up into the shade of a tall, old oak tree that stood nearby, pressing her bare back and rear up against its textured bark.  Feverishly, she began working through his clothes and he helped her along to get himself as nude as her as quickly as possible.  Soon, he was completely unclothed before her, his balls heavy and his cock throbbing at full mast between their bodies, and he closed in to take her ruby lips in a deep, passionate kiss.

            Kagura moaned softly into Byakuya’s mouth, playing her tongue against his.  Now, she was one-on-one with him without Naraku to supply his perverse interference, and she fully intended to _enjoy it_.  Wrapping her arms around him, she shifted her weight onto one foot, then hiked her opposite thigh up his side to rock and thrust her hips to his, silently begging him to fill her.  He played with her large, pale breasts, toying at her rosy nipples, then kissed her again and lowered himself to his knees before her.  He spread her raised thigh away from the other, guiding his mouth to her weeping cunt.

            “Thank you, but please, _don’t_ ,” Kagura gasped as Byakuya began to lap at the silky, lubricated petals of her pussy, suckling at her swollen, hooded clit and gorging himself on her creamy female juices.  “No more foreplay.  Just _fuck me!_ ”

            “I _insist_ on this,” Byakuya intoned as he looked up along Kagura’s flat stomach, between her heaving breasts and into her lusty red eyes.  “Blame Naraku, if you like.  He gave me this taste for a woman’s essence, and you are _delicious_.  I didn’t get a chance to do this for you earlier.”

            For the next few minutes, Byakuya simply _ate_ Kagura up, feasting on her in the best way.  Ever the hentai, Naraku had given him a tongue on the order of Sesshomaru’s: long, strong, and, highly-flexible, deliberately designed to make oral sex extremely pleasurable for a woman, any woman _at all_.  Reaching around Kagura to grasp possessively at both cheeks of her perfect ass, Byakuya used his versatile oral muscle to full effect and pressed it deep inside her creaming, grasping tunnel, licking directly at the swollen sweet spot along her anterior vaginal wall and reaching deeper to touch the smooth, rubbery mouth of her womb.  By her heat, her cervical secretions were _loaded_ with female demonic sex hormones, letting him _taste_ how ready her body was to bear a child.  Of course, he now knew it was impossible for her to conceive with him, but they would still have fun trying.

            After bringing Kagura to several small, yet thrilling orgasms, Byakuya ‘felt’ many pairs of animal eyes roving over him and his female reflection.  Separating his mouth from her pussy with a smacking _pop,_ he looked up at her again, the entire lower half of his face dripping with her fluids.  “I think we have an _audience_ ,” he warned to her with a playful, suggestive tone.

            Panting in her pleasure, Kagura looked around the forest surrounding her and Byakuya.  Indeed, she could see several animals that dwelled in such a forest watching the two of them inquisitively: deer, foxes, rabbits, and the occasional tanuki.  She realized the sounds she’d been making, those of a beautiful, powerful demoness enjoying her sexuality, had drawn them to the scene.

            Byakuya conjured one of his enchanted kiku flowers into a hand for Kagura to see.  “Would you like us to have some privacy?” he asked.

            Intrigued, Kagura nodded.  Byakuya blew his kiku a kiss and tossed it into the air above himself and his twin, and the large white flower massively increased in size, like one of Kagura’s magic feathers.  The now-giant kiku floated above the forest floor, then turned on its side and opened its many petals to face its center to Byakuya and Kagura, drifting closer to them and closing around them and the tree at Kagura’s back.  Now, they were sheltered within a cocoon of very large, silky soft, pleasant smelling kiku petals, protected from the prying eyes of the forest.

            With a snap of his fingers, Byakuya summoned a tiny bit of his youki into a shining orange orb, setting it afloat in the air.  It served as candlelight to illuminate his body and Kagura’s inside the comfortable, sound-shielded darkness of the giant kiku.  “That’s better,” he whispered to her.  He stood up in front of her, keeping her right thigh spread away from the left with his left hand and placing his right on her opposite hip as he mated his hips to hers and guided his throbbing cock to her sex.  Gazing into her gorgeous ruby eyes with a certainty that had her heart racing, he entered her firmly, sinking his full length into her generously lubricated cunt in one slow, smooth thrust.

            Kagura gave up a long, throaty _yowl_ as Byakuya filled her with his big cock, her pussy’s quivering walls spreading wide to accept him.  By the mathematical perfection of Naraku’s design of their bodies, the crown of his cock met the mouth of her womb and she could feel his heart beating through it and the meaty shaft behind it.  She reached up to undo the tie holding his hair up into its tail and he shook his head from side to side to let those silky black tresses of his fall freely over his shoulders.  In return, he did the same to her, freeing her relatively-shorter hair from its own constraints and helping it down her pale shoulders, between her spider-branded back and the tree behind her.

            Byakuya began to move inside Kagura without preamble.  This was their third encounter and she was better used to his size now, having had Naraku, as well.  With Sayaka’s permission, he was finally giving his female reflection what her body demanded in its new, wild heat, or at least _part_ of it.  He couldn’t give her a child, something he was quite relieved by, but he could at least make her body _think_ it was getting one.  Kagura moaned softly at the sensation of his cock moving inside her, slipping a hand around his sinewed neck to pull his forehead to hers in twisted, mental communion.  “ _Heh_ …” she panted as she organized her thoughts under the onslaught of such pleasure.  “You and me fucking again.  Would you call this incest…or _masturbation?_ ”

            “Mmm…I do prefer the latter,” Byakuya replied right away, pumping hard and deep into Kagura’s cunt, mating the head of his cock to her cervix with perfect, repeating accuracy and setting her womb aflutter on each thrust.  “But this isn’t _mere_ masturbation, is it?  This is _Ultimate Masturbation_ , the absolute most fun a person can have while still fucking his or _her_ self.”

            “ _Mmm_ … _ha!_ ”  Kagura gave up a genuine laugh, reminiscent of one of Naraku’s by the dark eroticism it carried.  “Just _think_ – if someone tells one of us: ‘Go fuck yourself,’ we can say: ‘Okay!’”

            Then, Byakuya remembered Kanna’s mirror.  It lay atop the pile he and Kagura had thrown their clothes in, its mirror side facing downward.  “But even while we fuck ourselves, we can still watch other people,” he suggested to his female reflection as he nailed her against the oak tree.  Keeping his left hand under the crook of her right knee to hold her open and adjusting his balance to keep his rhythm inside her, he moved his right hand from her left hip and extended it behind him, toward the mirror.  It leapt into his hand by telekinetic impulse and he brought it around to face the mirror side of it to himself and Kagura, holding it so that they could both had a good viewing angle of it.  “Think of Kikyo and Kohaku again.”

            Gazing into the mirror as Byakuya continued to fuck her, Kagura thought of Kikyo and Kohaku as he suggested.  From her perspective, the reflection of her own face dissolved, replaced by a real-time image of Kikyo, fully nude and laying against the bank of a forest hot spring, with a fully nude Kohaku pumping away between her widely-spread thighs.  Her jealousy of Kikyo aside, she found them stunningly, captivatingly beautiful in their pleasure, and her own pleasure grew as a result.

            “They look _good_ together, don’t they?” Byakuya whispered, noting Kagura’s stimulated expression and agreeing whole-heartedly with the sentiment behind it.  He roved his eyes over Kikyo’s smooth, pale curves and Kohaku’s more tanned, well-muscled angles.  “She’s so soft and accepting for him, and he’s so hard and powerful for her.”

            Her ruby eyes falling halfway-closed in her passion as Byakuya pushed her closer and closer to orgasm, Kagura bit her lower lip as she watched Kohaku make fast, frenzied love to Kikyo.  There was an urgency and a desperation in his movements, a desperation she understood all too well.  Though she did not know of the means by which Kikyo gained the ability to feel sexual pleasure again, she did recognize that Kohaku was trying to make the most of the limited time afforded to him and his miko lover, to take whatever pleasure he could and give it in return.  She was in the same situation herself as she let Byakuya fuck her, partly to try and forget that her usefulness to Naraku was finite and ever waning.  The oni lord had given her a second life on a whim and he could take it away just as suddenly and easily.  Even then, as her heart beat inside her chest, no longer disembodied from her, she felt the ghostly imprint of his fingers on its palpitating walls.

            For his own part, Byakuya felt his own climax approaching.  His big, heavy balls drew up tightly to his body, his prostate pulsing deep at the root of his long, thick cock as he pumped it into Kagura’s pussy.  “I know you want him and not me,” he said to her, referring to Kohaku as he slowed his rhythm inside her to stave off the pressure building up in him.

            Kagura glanced at Byakuya as if to apologize and he smiled at her, shaking his head in friendly understanding.  “It’s… _nnngh…_ it’s okay,” he continued, his voice conveying some strain as he took both of them to the very edge of climax.  “It’s _right_ that you want him.  As good as this feels right now, we should aspire ourselves toward others.  I have Sayaka, and soon, you’ll have Kohaku.  Now, call his name.”

            “Do _what?_ ” Kagura asked in surprise.

            “Pretend that I’m him,” Byakuya clarified.  “Imagine that it’s him taking you right now, not me.”

            “K-Kohaku,” Kagura uttered breathlessly without any hesitation, speaking the taijiya’s name almost as a term of worship in her pleasure.  Her pussy creamed over around Byakuya’s cock with a fresh flood of female lubrication, her juices dripping out of her around him and falling to the ground at their feet in dribbling globs.  “Oh… _Kohaku…”_

            Byakuya positively _growled_ in hedonistic approval by the sound of Kohaku’s name on Kagura’s lips.  “Yes, that’s _good_.  Take the mirror,” he said to her with increasing urgency in his voice, wiggling Kanna’s mirror in his hand for her to see.  The beautiful wind witch took the mirror from him as he wanted, holding it at arm’s length to continue looking into it, and he placed his freed hand back on her left hip to anchor his thrusts again.  Gazing into the mirror as she did and gaining decidedly voyeuristic enjoyment from it, he began to move harder and deeper in her pussy but kept his slow pace, gearing up for a feverish, thrusting finish.  “Now, I’m going to make you come, and when you do, I want you to _scream_ Kohaku’s name.  Scare every animal in this forest and let them know whose seed you _really_ want.”

            In the mirror’s silent, gently rippling image, Kohaku thrust his hips hard between Kikyo’s thighs and held them there, his back arching and head tossing rearward as orgasm overwhelmed him.  “Oh, God…” Kagura hushed.  “He’s coming _inside her_ …”

            Seeing Kohaku releasing himself inside Kikyo, Byakuya _snarled_ as he felt the hot, pumping pressure in his balls move against his command.  He summoned every fiber of internal muscle discipline available to hold off the boiling flood of ejaculation and began to really _hammer_ Kagura into the tree behind her, fucking her hard and fast to bring her over the edge with him.  His thrusts began to lift her off the single foot she stood on as he found a resonating inertial balance between their bodies, and her breath hitched over and over with a sexy, yet somehow endearing _‘Ah!’_ He buried his face into the curve of her right shoulder, kissing his way up her neck and back down again.  “Do it,” he ordered harshly to her, speaking against her skin in between kisses and finally giving himself over to the reproductive process raging inside him.  “Come for me, Kagura.  Come for me **_NOW!_** _”_

            The hard pounding of Byakuya’s cock and the sight of Kohaku giving Kikyo the same finally set Kagura off.  The blood vessels in her neck strained visibly and she threw her head back against the bark of the tree at her back, squeezing her eyes shut and crying out Kohaku’s name as Byakuya wanted: “ _Kohaku!_ ”

            “ _Yessss_ …” Byakuya rasped with an orgasmic hiss.  He gave Kagura a few more vicious, penetrating lunges, then buried himself to the hilt inside her and held himself there, just as Kohaku did with Kikyo.  “That’s fucking _it!_ ”  His balls tightened and his cock swelled, arched, then erupted inside Kagura’s cunt, his thick, creamy seed pumping through her cervix and exploding directly into her womb.  He planted the first, most powerful spurts as deep inside her as he could manage, then began to thrust back and forth, working his throbbing, spewing cock against her inner muscles to keep his pleasure going.

            Kagura overflowed around Byakuya in mere moments, the hot semen he couldn’t pack into her womb exiting her body around him in a messy _squirt_ , drenching his balls and dripping away to the mossy earth below.  The ‘taste’ of sperm-loaded wind demon cum in her belly provided instant, immediately palpable relief from her heat, however temporary, and she took a deep, satisfied breath as she felt herself return to general sanity.  Eventually, Byakuya stopped moving between her thighs and sank himself fully into one final time, holding still and pressing himself close to her to enjoy her body’s warmth and voluptuous softness as they rode out the ‘afterglow’ together.

            The image of Kohaku and Kikyo in Kanna’s mirror continued, and Kohaku withdrew from Kikyo to begin cleaning her up.  Similarly, Byakuya pulled out of Kagura, though with much _messier_ consequences, and he knelt in front of her again to clean her with his mouth, whereas Kohaku only used his bodysuit’s sash as a rag.  Once she was no longer oozing with his seed, he took Kanna’s mirror from her and helped her dress, slipping into his own clothes afterward.

            Now, Kagura was spared from the madness of her heat for a little while longer.  “Feel better?” Byakuya asked to her as he slipped his feet back into his sandals and fixed his hair back into a high tail.

            “Much.  Thank you,’ Kagura replied as she fixed her own hair, then added with a somber tone: “But I can feel that there’s still some of that…that _urge_ left in me.  It’s going to come back.”

            “Only pregnancy will make it go away permanently, I fear,” Byakuya said.  He paused for a moment to turn east and ‘gaze’ through the dense forest in front of him, imagining the opaque silhouette of Naraku’s castle jutting from the sea.  He recalled what Naraku had said to Kagura about Kohaku in the chamber deep beneath it.  “Naraku means for Kohaku to give you that pregnancy, regardless of whether you or Kohaku really _want_ it or not.  He hasn’t told me anything specific as he trusts me less and less, but I think he intends to do something truly _terrible_ with the child you and Kohaku create.”

            Kagura bristled at the thought of any child of hers coming under Naraku’s influence in any way.  She knew she had to find a way to escape her dark creator.  Blessed and cursed with fertility now, she was in more danger from him than ever.  “I guess we’d better get on with our mission,” she said regardless.  “Naraku will surely punish us somehow if we tarry too long.”

            Byakuya drew another of his origami cranes from inside his vestment and transformed it to its giant flight size and Kagura did the same with one of her feathers.  They rode their respective transports out of the forest and into the sky, using Kanna’s mirror to navigate back onto Kikyo and Kohaku’s trail.

 

**-To be continued-**


End file.
